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#78 Multilingual Children

All white people want their children to speak another language. There are no exceptions. They dream about the children drifting in between French and English sentences as they bustle about the kitchen while they read the New York Times and listen to Jazz.

As white people age, they start to feel more and more angry with their parents for raising them in a monolingual home. At some point in their lives, most white people attempt to learn a second language and are generally unable to get past ordering in a restaurant or over-pronouncing a few key words. This failure is not attributed to their lack of effort, but rather their parents who didn’t teach them a new language during their formative years.

White people believe that if they had been given French language instruction when they were younger, their lives would have turned out very differently. Instead of living in the US, they would be living and working abroad for the United Nations or some other organization with a headquarters in Switzerland or The Hague.

Generally, white people prefer their children to speak French. Advanced white people will actually spend outrageous amounts of money to send their children to a Lycee or Ecole Francaise. But the vast majority will abandon their dreams when they realize that need a second mortgage so their child can have a better study abroad experience in France.

Languages such as German, Spanish, Swedish, or Italian are also acceptable, but are considered to be poor substitutes (especially Spanish). At the time of writing, it is still considered expert-level white person behavior to have white children speaking Asian and African languages.

There is only one way to use this information to your advantage: speaking another language means that white people are more likely to want to have children with you. It is seen as a cheaper alternative to language schools.

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Wait, Spanish can’t be on this list. For some reason, white people aren’t comfortable with anyone– especially their kids–speaking Spanish, and will immediately suspect they are being spoken about in Spanish if they hear one word of it.

Je Mappelle, Elmy is about all I can remember from my Skool daze in England, but French isn’t much use in Australia so it got dropped. Japanese is the second language taught in skools here.

As I’m also guilty of number 11 in this blog (and married to a chinese lady) it is likely that my kids will speak cantonese and English.

I hope it isn’t still weird by the time they get to that age of talking.

Heheh this entry reminds me of the Russell Peters you tube video when he’s talking about the African guy in the Casino. If you don’t know it do a search for the Full the Russell Peters video, quite funny

White people, while adoring photo ops with brown folks and trumpeting “diversity”, nevertheless secretly think European cultures and languages to be vastly superior to all others. Yes, Spanish is a European language, but it makes white people uncomfortable because so many brown people speak it. The language is associated not with Spain, but rather with Latin America, where so many newly arrived Americans come from, people whose brown skin makes white people uncomfortable.

Not only is it all about spending huge amounts of money to put kids into alternative language schools but because of this every conversation with parents in alternative language schools comes back to “well my timmy – he’s in this french immersion program” or “what you should really have your sandra do is attend my timmy’s immersion daycare”… this post is just so accurate!

I sent my daughter to a French preschool and kindergarten, because I wanted her to speak a language I was fluent in myself. The school is in a very exclusive suburb, and despite many platitudes about “diversity” and an “international worldview”most of the families there wouldn’t be caught dead in a non-European language situation,(with the possible exception of Japanese). Some of these same people were fighting the expansion of bilingual (Spanish) programs in the public schools (yes, it’s European but universally associated with Latin America).

Interestingly, the French teachers at the school were appalled at the ignorance of world cultures they experienced here.
When they tried to introduce elements of Franco-African culture to the curriculum, their efforts were universally rejected.

Good future topics: nannies and au pairs! And I can’t believe you didn’t mention jazz yet.

Do you mean Asian people do not want to be bilingual ? Many of the things you write appear more to Asian than to white, but I guess it because you re in the US and want to genralise about white people there ?

btw I do think your blog is funny. Somehow it s very to the point about a certain group of people. But i think I don’t it’s not really about white people.

Experts on “your” culture will sometimes get their kids a babysitter from that background and ask them to speak to the child in their language, and will take them to musical performances and theatre in that language.

When the same white people live in another country they will do the reverse and pay vast amounts so their kid can go to the American/British school, and get babysitters who speak English (I’ve babysat for some such people in France, and they’d be half-proud, half-annoyed when their kids spoke to each other only in French and responded to their parents in French). IME, Spanish is actually not a problem if the child has learned it in college/study abroad in Spain and has the right Castilian accent.

The children of immigrants to America also decide to hate their parents in the second generation for not teaching them their ancestral language.

It is worth mentioning, that in far-fethced plans to work in some capacity overseas thrusting children into the mix of a foreign culture is ALWAYS counted by white people as a “Great learning opportunity, the kids will become bi-lingual and experience other cultures”…

Never mind how much more terrifying it is the first time they get lost in the souk!

i’m working on my french. we have to learn it school here and i’m far enough along that i actually have a fighting chance of learning it properly. with anything else, i would be “unable to get past ordering in a restaurant or over-pronouncing a few key words”. and also being white-ish (though not totally white – thanks mum!), i am genetically pre-disposed to french anyway. phewf!

spanish is what i’d really love to learn. and i might. it doesn’t have the same connotations up here as it does south of the border (see what i did there?), so parents don’t mind if little abigail and logan learn it in school.

I have this fantasy of marrying a french woman, moving to brazil and hiring a pinoy nanny. the child can learn spanish from me, french from his mother, tagalog from the nana, portuguese from his surroundings and will pick up english when his mother and I speak to each other. I’d deserve a doctorate of whiteness If i pulled that off.
-The white Mexican (yes, there are such things)

As a white man who speaks French and German, I find myself wishing I knew Spanish as well. But none of these would come in all that handy in north-central Idaho (south of the Nazis, north of the Mormons), except for reading books in the original while I work my sweet government job. Pretty fuckin’ white, I know.

Here in California, the ethnics – aka anglo people, absolutely MAUL Spanish words such as San Rafael, Manteca, Alameda, Vallejo (shudder!), Paso Robles, Valencia, Cañada, Laguna Honda (yes, Ellie Mae, that [H] is silent), etc., BUT, I love to annoy them by incorrectly pronouncing Italian and French words. They’re too pompous and stupid to speak a second language that’s eminently useful, but Jethro would rather get the names of his charcuteries and San Gimignano right. Yesterday it was Kraft’s Singles – today it’s fromage.

“At some point in their lives, most white people attempt to learn a second language and are generally unable to get past ordering in a restaurant or over-pronouncing a few key words. This failure is not attributed to their lack of effort, but rather their parents who didn’t teach them a new language during their formative years.”

Agreed

“There is only one way to use this information to your advantage: speaking another language means that white people are more likely to want to have children with you. It is seen as a cheaper alternative to language schools.
”

Erod – hehe, I think I may share your multilingual dreams. But when you have couples who come from different linguistic backgrounds, have studied foreign languages and then raise their children in a different country there are bound to be struggles over which language mum and dad should speak to the kids in, and the poor kids probably don’t want any of it. But they’ll have the nannies and summer language camps thrust upon them whether they like it or not.

As for immigrants, I was talking about second gens, and for the most part first-gen immigrants to the US will try their best to adapt and encourage their children to speak English, and the children will be embarrassed that their parents are “different” and speak funny and have funny food. Then those children’s children will resent their parents for not having learned the language well enough to pass it on. But true bilingualism is hard to keep up for immigrants unless they live in an area with a critical mass of people speaking their language.

Children should be able to speak all Romance languages! (though if they try to learn other languages such as Swahili, Arabic or Mandarin they tend to be looked at as almost too scarily ambitious or potentially anime dorks)

oh snap! when i decided to backpack around Europe one summer, it was very, very important that i learn to speak a language. i studied French AND German. i already knew Spanish from high school. but everybody in LA speaks at least a little bit of Spanish, so that didn’t count.

if i ever talk about it now, i make it clear that i studied those languages to SPEAK them. i also mention what a shame it is in this country that we’re required to study a language in high school, but never to actually use it.

Of course, bilingualism is pretty lame compared with TRIlingualism. And that was one of the *entrance* requirements to universities in the colonial era. Or I should say, “college”, which started at 15.

There are a bunch of schools in my town that cater to people who want their kids to be bilingual or better before they can even read. Nice concept, but you gotta have the $$ to go that route. I don’t have that kind of money, so my wife and I try the languages that we do know at home. Why? ‘Cause we’re white people, of course!

As a white person who speaks French (though not from childhood), I feel the need to point out that, aside from the accent issues, it’s actually “ecole francaisE” since ecole is feminine. Because white people like grammar and being right about things.

I just realized another thing that white people like: Blogs devoted to listing what white people like using deprecating humor. Because we’re white, we can take it. And if we’re here, we must be in on the joke.

But you seem ignorant of its history, where it was widely promoted by many scholars in Asia and thrived in a time of anticolonial sentiments.

Also, 90% of the people in this thread need to take linguistics and buy into popular, but fallacious ideas about the nature of language acquisition. I prescribe a healthy dose of reading “The Language Instinct” by Steven Pinker.

White people can help their children become bilingual by hiring a Spanish-speaking nanny. Of course, the kids will forget it in a few years or just stop speaking it once they realize that it has little social value in the US.

Something I noticed in regards to Spanish is that most Americans wish to learn Spanish from Spain, and totally blow-off Latin America Spanish. I guess it makes them feel more European if they’re able to acquire the Castilian accent. But truth be told – and Im sure many will agree – the Spaniard accent is probably the driest accent in the Spanish language.

In my opinion the best Spanish accent is by far the Colombian one. So formal yet so sexy!!!! Argentinian is also popular, Chilean, and of course the Mexican one. Mexican Spanish is the norm in the United States by the way.

Can we please make a distinction between snobby overpriviledged whites who want their children to speak a second language as a status symbol and real working class people who want their children to learn Spanish so as to be economically competetive ? In Florida public schools, if your name even remotely sounds Spanish, you benefit from bilingual education from day one to graduation. English-only students get a joke of a second language class, and upon graduation cannot get a job at Mc Donalds because the bilinguals, trained at taxpayer expense, are more qualified than their classmates. Your post was funny, but this is a failure of our gov’t to prepare eveyone equally, and it is colorblind problem.

So much of this post is hilariously on target. I nearly giggled when I read the part about people getting angry at their parents for raising them in a monolingual home. However, being both White and Latino (my mother is Scots-Irish and my father is Venezuelan), over the years I’ve had plenty of opportunities to observe another subset of white person, which is the fair-skinned type who speaks better Spanish than a lot of Latinos. (I’m from the Midwest, by the way, and I know many, many Latinos from this and other parts of the country who speak little or no Spanish.) Such lily-white Spanish-speakers often develop an interest in the language during a period of study abroad in Spain or Latin America (study abroad itself being another quintessential Thing White People Like) and they often end up with a decent command of the language, giving the lie to the view that people can’t learn languages as adults. Of course, students in study-abroad programs spend much of their time partying their asses off and snagging local girlfriends or boyfriends, so maybe the added fun of those extra-curricular activities gives them incentive to improve their Spanish.

Still, I do agree it’s painfully true that there are plenty of NPR-listening, Starbuck’s-sipping, Saab-driving ‘progressives’ who are uncomfortable with letting their kids have too much contact with Spanish, as many such types associate the language with poor brown people whose culture they see as quaint at best and patriarchal and backward at worst.

So much of this post is hilariously on target. I nearly giggled when I read the part about people getting angry at their parents for raising them in a monolingual home. However, being both White and Latino (my mother is Scots-Irish and my father is Venezuelan), over the years I’ve had plenty of opportunities to observe another subset of white person, which is the fair-skinned type who speaks better Spanish than a lot of Latinos. (I’m from the Midwest, by the way, and I know many, many Latinos from this and other parts of the country who speak little or no Spanish.) Such lily-white Spanish-speakers often develop an interest in the language during a period of study abroad in Spain or Latin America (study abroad itself being another quintessential Thing White People Like) and they often end up with a decent command of the language, giving the lie to the view that people can’t learn languages as adults. Of course, students in study-abroad programs spend much of their time partying their asses off and snagging local girlfriends or boyfriends, so maybe the added fun of those extra-curricular activities gives them incentive to improve their Spanish.

Still, I do agree it’s painfully true that there are plenty of NPR-listening, Starbuck’s-sipping, Saab-driving ‘progressives’ who are uncomfortable with letting their kids have too much contact with Spanish, as many such types associate the language with poor brown people whose culture they see as quaint at best and patriarchal and backward at worst.

totally true about the racialized hierarchy for languages. no one thinks its ‘cool’ to speak farsi or arabic, its slightly strange, sorta awkward, i get a lot of ‘why are you interested in THAT’ for having studied both.

haha! I love this website, and I have to say that this entry hits close to home! I’ve been studying mandarin for six years, and I ‘ve spent so much time learning it that I want my kids (when I have them) to be able to speak it too. I don’t even have kids yet and I plan to send them to an immersion school! I’m so white! Well at least i get bonus points for not wanting them to go to a euro language immersion school.

well I was raised bilingually German-English (German father, American mother) and as a diplomat’s child living also in Turkey and Russia (then Soviet Union) picked up a bit here an there – great for work and traveling which I did lots and to speak to my one set of niece and nephew who speak Russian and are currently learning German (living in Moscow), the other set of nieces and nephew speak German and French living in Brussels
this I think is great – well and if you don’t have these chances there is always the aupair option and ask them to sepak their language with the kids

So when I was living in Germany I was supposed to learn the German language and not just the dirty words? Blast, I don’t care. It still impresses German tourists when I can tell them (in fairly decent German) that f*cking makes me happy.

This article made me laugh. I’m a Spaniard, living in Barcelona. My children, like most children here, are bilingual Catalan/Spanish, and I don’t know any parent here who’s not really crazy for their children to speak…. English.

Regarding the Castilian accent to be dry… well, that’s true! I’ve been said many times (by Latin-American Spanish speakers) that Spaniards, especially us who we were born in Castile, bark when we talk. And I really think is true.

Colombians not only have a mellower accent, but they make excelent use of the Spanish grammar when speaking.

Ahaha most of my friends are white and some of them studied at Lycee Francais. A good majority of them are currently studying abroad polishing their French or other foreign language skills. I’m hoping to do the same next year.

Seig fuckin’ heil!!! Isn’t that the point of this site, after all is said and done – to get whitey to recognize how the only “authentic” way of being, *just happens* to be that version of *whiteness* which reifies the version of white raciality which most antiracists would, at least one would hope, seek to critique?

Multilingual and “mulitcultural” kids i.e. who’ve lived allll over the world!! thus aquiring their languages, insight into diversity, worldview, all of which will no doubt secure them a job as a interpreter, peacekeeper or diplomat with the UN.

As for this post, check http://www.petiteanglaise.com, who trumpets her kid as speaking English/French/Mandarin and as a multi-skilled “genius”. LOL.

I thought Spanish would be key to owning businesses in America. I know how white people are so concerned with the bottom line. Why not have the ability to communicate with the cheap labor you plan on hiring for your restaurant or store?

haaa i laughed so hard at this one – because it is soooo true – i’m truly pissed at my parents for not providing french language instruction- and i feel as a canadian with a quebecois mother it is even more horrible! when i was in france people begged me not to speak their language – because i sucked that bad – gawd! and it is true all of my friends (homies) want their children to speak french in their homes- and they have promptly shipped their pre-school kiddies off to french daycare – the problem is my friends only know fronglais – fake french and the kids french all but disappears once they hit the thresholds of their homes. it is truly a little pretentious environment we have constructed for ourselves – lol

Humiliate those liberal scumbags – they’re the real hatemongers! They hate the white-working class and they patronise non-white culture, which has to go through their sanitized liberal, cultural relativist wash.

For the most part, and perhaps mostly true for middle and southern America, some white people only think its cool when other white people speak other languages.
Gawd forbid a Latin American person speaks Spanish because this would make them feel excluded them if they dont speak the language….or maybe even think it’s reverse racism and the only true American language is English.
However there are others that also do love to surprise you if they happen to speak another language,specially Spanish, and use it as a dating mechanism. A sort of “BAM! you didnt know i was a white boy that could speak spanish huh? ….and can i now date you now that i know of your culture and your struggles?”

#79 canned food drives- white people do not eat food from cans anyway; why not donate them to the underprivileged.

#80 The Kennedys- white people have given unconditional love to this political machine, despite over a half century of nepotism and philandering.

#81 The Masters- most [male] white people aspire to go to Augusta National golf course at least once in their lifetimes.

#82 Land Rovers- despite gas guzzling on par with the VERY nonwhite Hummer and Cadilac Escalade, white people, for some unknown reasons, have given this vehicle a pass on their self-imposed fuel emissions standards.

What White People are you quoting? Where did you do your research? In NY..many of us white people would be thrilled if everybody spoke English…and are sick of signs being in 2 languages. My friends have no interest in having our kids learn Spanish and are annoyed that half the cartoons they have to watch shove Spanish down their throats. So no….as you say ALL white people are obsessed with being bilingual and having bilingual kids.
Americans can barely speak their own language properly.

This is hysterical! I just happened upon it this morning as a white person reading the NPR site from Chile where I am learning Spanish in order to survive with my Chilean husband and his very fast speaking family. Funnily, I had French in school from 1st grade through 12th, AND 2 years in college, and I rue the fact that we were not offered Spanish instead. Who the hell needs French? Way more people speak Spanish in the world. So, I found it amusing that the first entry I read was the one about multilingual children. Waaahaaa! By the way, I can’t speak French to save my life!! And let’s not forget that learning another language is good for the aging brain, regardless of your motives.

It matters not what color or political persuasion you are. What matters is that you can laugh at yourself. Keep writing this blog!!

“Majoring in a foreign language is the new majoring in studio art, and it’s just as useless for the languages these people are actually studying (anything but Arabic or Chinese)”

Spanish and Portugese are pretty helpful actually. I can’t speak for french cause I am in an officially french-speaking country and immersion schools are publically funded here. I know people that work in the system and a lot of the kids are middle eastern and african immigrants, though.

“totally true about the racialized hierarchy for languages. no one thinks its ‘cool’ to speak farsi or arabic, its slightly strange, sorta awkward, i get a lot of ‘why are you interested in THAT’ for having studied both.”

Tell that to the 60-odd white people that have told me they want to learn arabic in the last year.

I hope there isn’t a suggestion that it is wrong to want your children to be bilingual. It is a fact that children are much better at learning languages, and being multilingual could be a huge advantage in later life. There’s nothing wrong with wanting the best for your kids.

I think all kids, white or otherwise, should be taught a second language to a much higher level than they are. And they should start earlier. Especially in English speaking countries. We are so far behind. It is shaming to hear the level to which the Dutch or Italians or Swedes of my generation speak English.

Funny, I’m actually black, or at least black enough to call myself black though I obviously an of mixed ethnicity (something white people also love) – Ironically (yes, anolther one) I also work for a Japanese company and have been there several times and have been learning to speak Japanese. Both my white girlfriend and her parents (both of whom have been to Japan but speak very little Japanese) love me. So, you’re theory on Asian languages MUST be right!!!

French??? The only people that speaks french are the one that lives in France…. and some canadians!! I really don’t understand why the “white” people wants to learn it thinking is the second language of choice….. and what is wrong with Spanish?? All south america, Mexico and Spain speaks spanish so some peole out there really likes french!!
mah!!!

I would say that White people love living like their poor for a month to see what its like. For that matter, they like doing anything for a month that’s different that they can tell their friends about and feel good about themselves.

1) i am brown! and learned TWO languages, for all 4 years, in a public school in the 2nd most corrupt inner city in the u.s.a.

2) Spanish from Spain makes me want to kill myself…it’s the worst.

3) you really CAN learn a language as an adult.

4) no matter what you look like, if you are not white and can converse fluently in another language, white people will think that you must be french/chinese/spanish/latino/arab/whatever the case may be.

5) lol @ swedish…do people in sweden even speak swedish?

6) i am brown, multilingual, and my kids will be too!

most non-white people HAVE to have multi-lingual kids, even if ebonics/aave/patois is the other language.

“Nobody speaks French but people in France and some Canadians?”???? are you serious?

A LOT OF AFRICA (2nd biggest continent in the world) IS FRANCOPHONE…i’m not fond of the term ‘la francophonie’ but come on white liberals, please get your shit together! France and Canada are not the only French-speaking countries. I know your white guilt isn’t so thick that you’ve forgotten about colonization…sheesh!

and
lol @ 96…that was SOOO white. even if you’re not white, you must have studied white people humor.

Don’t forget about white people teaching their babies sign language. It is very chic to have your 6 month old baby able to communicate through signs while lacking the physical ability to form words. This is used as a proof that even at a young age their progeny are far superior to other, less dextrous, children.

Brownie…..
I don’t care about skin color my dear, I like everyone, my best friend is black and from Senegal and gues what? he speak French and I give him hard time about it all the time, so my comment about languages had nothing to do with the color of anyone skin. I am not white liberal or any other skin remarks, if you would have “your” shit together you would have got the point that (in a good way) simply I don’t like french!!! Happy now!

Is this all a joke? I mean I was reading this and it infuriated me. I am Hispanic. I know 3 languages and now I am learning to speak Hungarian and I cannot believe insensitivity of this blog. I speak French as well but to say that no one wants to learn Spanish is pretty much saying that is beneath you is extremely uneducated. Look around you. Look at the job listings. Most places not only prefer to hire a bi-ligual person but they want a bi-lingual that speaks Spanish. I do not know if I should be offended or not.

Oh one more point I would like to make. Besides being born and raised in NYC. I have a white boyfriend. Everyone I come across call me white because of my education and the way I speak, what I listen to (in terms of music), how I dress, and how I conduct myself. That being said, my boyfriend and I have agreed after being married and having children, we will raise our child to be multi-lingual (English, Spanish, Hungarian, and yes probably French)!

Really #108 is that how you really feel? Funny how me of Puerto Rican Decent with Family in Spain, I have never come across white people not wanting to associate with me. Your comment is appalling and maybe you and your friends should get out more because we of Hispanic Descent have more to offer you than busing your tables, serving your food, or taking care of your children.

You are so funny!!! I could read these all day. I found you via Daily Candy. I don’t know how to take all this as white people hate stereotypes (though we do it all the time). You are scary in how correct you are about this stuff!!!

I am a white lady who grew up in California. Almost everyone took Spanish as their foreign languarge class in high school. It was very practical for that area to also know Spanish. But I was a bit of a rebel and took German because that’s the language my great-grandfather spoke (he came over in 1909).

I have used my German once. I now wish I had learned Spanish- I have encountered countless times when I could have used it at work and socially. Hindsight is 20/20!

Now I live in Pennsylvania. The preschools and elementary schools offer Spanish to the little ones. There doesn’t seem to be any preoccupation with French out here.

Personally, I want to go on record as a white girl stating I see nothing special about speaking French. No one language is better than the other. What one chooses to learn should be about where you live and what’s practical and/or to learn more about your heritage. Of course, a crash course before a foreign vacation is nice, too!

My Norwegian wife insisted on having Norwegian au pairs who would speak to the kids in Norwegian. French was de riguer in school, and Spanish streng verboten! because the Spanish teachers in their school did not speak acceptable Spanish. In many WASP circles, Spanish is acceptable, but ONLY if it’s exquisitely properly pronounced Castilian of the sort that only upper class Spaniards can understand.

One of the difficulties of this blog is the (typically ethnic) failure to differentiate among the various flavors of “white people.” You’re generally aiming at the post-modern, Northeastern WASP from an upper-middle-class or higher background. Most of the stuff you write about would be utterly foreign to working class, or even lower-middle-class white ethnics.

And I am so typical. My dad speaks French and German and taught neither my brother nor I either and we are incredibly resentful towards him for this. So on our own, we’ve both taken up French and I’ve also taken up Swedish.

Spot on, except for the French part. Everyone I know wants there kid to speak Spanish so they can easier get a job in a non-profit. However, Chinese comes second so the kid can get a job in international business and support their parents in old age. Becasue we worked at non-profits and are broke in retirement.

m.e.s. – when I went to school in California, the langauges you took reflected social class: the upper class took French and Latin, sometimes German or Italian as well; the upper middle class took French or German, and usually a little Latin, the middle class took French or German, or perhaps Italian if it was offered, the lower middle class took German, Italian or Spanish, and the working class took Spanish.

If one grew up in agricultural areas in the ’60s or ’50s, and was going to be expected to communicate with Spanish-speaking laborers, the preferred language was Italian, because an Italian-speaker could make him- or herself sufficiently understood to a Spanish-speaker to accomplish the work of a boss.

Well, I wanted my daughter to learn German in High School, as it’s common here in the north-western part of South Carolina, but she didn’t care for it. Then my sons came along and picked up “yankee” from some of the northerner kids that they hung out with. Some of their pronunciations still grate on my ears.

I learned enough French in high school and college to get by on a business trip to Paris. Funny thing though, as soon as I used my French, almost all everbody told me that they spoke English (though not Southern US American). And people say the French are rude.

to 96: Yep, one of the few native French speaker I know was born and raised in Africa. He’s white with children born in the USA. He wanted his daughter to list herself as African-American on her college application but she rolled her eyes and refused.

LOL. Do you have a post on white people wanting their children to learn to play that “ideal” musical instrument, as well as white people buying into the argument that music lessons should be started as young as age 3 in order to give the child the best chance of becoming a famous musician? LOL, LOL, and LOL.

All white people want their children to speak another language. There are no exceptions. What a load of crap! As “white” parent here in the U. S. I wanted my children to grow up with a strong command of the english language and be able to carry on an intelligent conversation. In hind sight if I would have wanted them to learn another language it would have been Spanish due to the large influx of Spanish speaking people in the U.S. and also because it’s the most used language in the world. Locally we have a large number of deaf people so if they would have wanted to learn to sign I would have been OK with that too. Personally I’d like to know where you got your facts and how did this become a “white” thing? I believe all parents want there children to be better then they are and if that means learning a second language then great. By the way I don’t read the “Times” nor do I listen to jazz. It appears to me this article was written from your personal view without any facts to back it up. I found this article to be insulting and if I were Hispanic, Black or any other minority I’d be really pissed!

dear white people who keep on pointing out that all this applies to a certain class of white people: I know somebody’s said this before, but I’d just like to point out that conflating this class w/whites per se is part of the joke. For ex. see the post about “knowing what’s best for poor people.”

white people are funny. If you want your child to learn french send them to france for one year. In order to actually learn a language you have to speak it everyday and I don’t understand why anyone would want to learn swedish lol, being swedish myself it’s just strange since you wont have any use of it outside of sweden…maybe in norway and finland but that’s it. And yeah you should definitely write about the aupairs and nannys! I’m an aupair atm in London lol

Alberto (#91) – over half the countries in Africa use French as either a first or second language, making it the continent with the largest number of French speaking people. Over 100 million Africans speak French fluently. So, it isn’t just the French and Canadians who speak French.

Note : I do not speak French, but I do speak Spanish (the Latin American kind) as a second language. It is actually Mexican Spanish…the standard first or second language of many Southern Californians. I also speak a little Thai, but I still have problems ordering in a restaurant.

Love the overgeneralizing. It is easy to put “white people” in one general group and say they all want the same things.

At the end of the day, it is good to have children learning another language. Having just recently graduated from college a lot of jobs are looking for bilingual people, and I’m not fluent in another language and that can be frustrating.

I don’t know why you wouldn’t want your children to have the opportunity to learn another language. By the time this generation of children are adults, everyone is going to have to be bilingual or they won’t be able to get a job, or function in society.

My son is taking French in middle school, and I am trying to get him to switch to Spanish so he can communicate with the other 80% of population in his school and our town! (and more and more towns around us…) I wish schools still offered Latin, since it is the main root of so many languages. You could use it as a base, and go on from there, to learn French, Spanish, Italian…

Okay, so this one is insane. White people don’t even like the French! I grew up in a French household (my mother married an american, moved here, he left, etc.). Speaking French did not change my life in any way whatsoever.
But I remember all the comments about the French growing up. Once, we had to do reports on countries in high school, and this girl Jessica got France.
Instead of a history type paper, she wrote about how unsanitary the French were, how the never shave their legs (my mother does not, but still!) how they don’t wear deodorant (Okay, after riding in a unairconditioned car for hours with my French cousins, I may somewhat agree, but she is not allowed to go there.)
I still don’t like her.
And now I get all these crap emails about the French from everyone and how the US rescued them in the 40’s, stupid emails from stupid Republicans. When I write back and talk about how the US was treating it’s own black citizens that same time, they get angry. When I say it’s hypocritical to write an email slandering immigration, where then at the bottom, these people will write something like,”Jesus & the American soldier are the only ones who died for you!” They maybe need to come down south, I’ve never seen so many Virgin Mary’s on autos like here in hispanic vehicles. I’m sorry Republicans, Jesus is not exclusive to your race.
Yikes.
Okay, so now that I’ve vented, I have two great topics white people like that haven’t been mentioned yet-
CRAIGSLIST.
OVERSEAS ADOPTION.
keep up the good work.

Hell, speaking another language would have made your post about moving to Canada a much different reality for disgruntled Americans. If I spoke French, I would TOTALLY LIVE in France, because at least they provide free healthcare, free college tuition, and free childcare, even if they they are as arrogant as we are.

If I spoke French, I would write all manners of obscenities in French here to express my feelings about the direction of this f-ing country. Pardon, my french. (:

Larry Sinclair claims he passed his polygraph test in his claim that Obama is a bisexual coke whore (who plans to expand NAFTA and supports war and the NAU. Well, that’s par for the course because the same is true for Hillary on all the same counts given all the lesbian talk and drug use and estrangement from Bill busy with his own male friends said Cathy O’Brien and all that). And Abramoff’s bank funds both Clinton and Obama, so why do you think you are being offered a choice. (My recent post at biostate talks a bit about the dynamics of gatekeeping in this fashion and what to do–so it’s on my mind right now).

This site promotes white people because studying abroad, teaching your kids French, and expensive sandwiches are good things. But I think you speak of the liberal white people with incomes over 250,000 USD.

I think it all depends on where you live. In the city I live in, in fact, in all the major cities in my state {hint: we have sun AND earthquakes}…it is considered very chic and desirable to have children who speak Spanish and Chinese school is also catching on. It’s more than just a language, it also embraces a “we love and care about the poor” ethic, it advertises one’s political stance…it has everything. Anyway, that’s the way it is here.

The whites who want their kids speaking French aren’t thinking about Africa, they invision Belgium and France where they’ll drink wine and visit art musuems while on the standard 18-year-old backpacking across Europe trip.
The kids can go to West Africa to work on a farm but only because it’ll look good on their Harvard application.

Funny shit. Just a note to all the European, Latin American, Australian ect. white people: the blog is really referring to only American white people, and really only a yuppy subset of that. It is satirizing a cultural group that is referred to as “white” in the US, doesn’t really include you guys unless you have assimilated into that group. It is not really about a racial group but a cultural group, even though many Americans confuse the two.

Dead-on! Except for the part about Spanish – I don’t agree that it’s a “lowly” language in the eyes of educated whites. Do you have any idea how many people study abroad in Spain in college? I spent a year in Madrid and even went back after college to teach English.

My kids are going to speak the Spanglish, I know a fair amount of espanol, in Texas you have little choice since you just sort of learn it through osmosis. Once you learn it though, you have a code language that most other white people can’t understand. I think white people like having code languages other white people can’t understand (like Latin). I don’t think that’s good enough though, I want my kids to speak german too because it sounds cool and it might improve their chances of landing a job working for the E.U. in Bruxelles.

You need to add sign language to the list or blog. Evidently that is the way to make your child really ready to be at the top of their kindergarten class. That’s becoming very important if a child is going to get into a top school later on and capture the really good jobs.

When my daughter was between the ages of 2 and 4, she had a Hispanic babysitter. This was fortunate, as now my daughter is 17 and still remembers how to say “kaka”.
Now she’s learning German in high school, so I eagerly anticipate the day when she can teach her own children
“Scheisse”.

Clearly your views of “white people” are about a specific sect where you’re from and you dont identify that clearly in this piece. Because of this you come across not only as an whining ass but as a racist, saying that, “All white people demand their children speak another language,” and other inflamatory garbage.

Let’s say I’m fluent in american street lingo, does that mean I’m a poser cause I’m white… or are white people all supposed to be rich and living on the good side of the tracks?

It’s readily apparent in society and research that the minds of children that are nutured with a vast array of knowledge actually become more intelligent and this knowledge builds a stonger diverse mental process. This is good for society.

Fluency in a second langauge has nothing to do with it.. the more you learn when your young the more tools you will have later in life to get the things that you need and hopefully what society needs. Not to mention, learning a second langauge brings diversity, knowledge and tolerance to the table… are you against that?

Lastly… Americans, not white people, are often criticized by Europeans as being less than diverse becasue we dont speak 5 languages or something to that effect like many Europeans do. Now “white people” are criticized in your column for learning another langauge, not becasue of the power of knowledge… but just to “one-up” someone of origins other than caucasion?

You are just fuel for the fire for anyone trying to keep the lines of race clearly drawn and not blurred.

I speak and write Swedish. I wasn’t born there nor was I forced to go there–I did live there for a time, however. It’s one of the world’s most useless languages, unless I’m in the mood to impress white people.

I think you are wrong on the suggestion that whites want their kids to learn French. Whites do not like France any more since the invasion of Iraq; note that whites were responsible for renaming french fries “freedom fries.” The French language is quite useless to yuppies seeking economic advancement–Chinese (Mandarin) is totally in now.

All the French whites need now is Cristina Aguilera singing about threeways, Moulin Rouge, Jean Paul Goutier, Louis Vouton (and the blacks are really into this now), romantic trips to Paris, and artistic excursions to Florence.

Speaking French has become virtually worthless in the global economy as France has gone to shit as a world power.

White parents are importing poor Chinese women to raise their children (speaking Mandarin) while they work 80 hours a week.

To: reinadelaz (#57)…having the blog be titled “stuff middle-and upper-class college educated white people like” would be kinda unwieldy, dontcha think? ;) The target of this blog is pretty clear once anyone has read a few posts…assuming they didn’t just come here to spew virulent racist nonesense or other crap.

To: Seamus (#89)…This is a humor site. Besides, the annoying part is when the parent only wants a child to know extra languages because it looks cool to do so. Kind of like having kids as accessories (which is mostly a celebrity/socialite white thing)

To: I’m not really white (#128)…Yes, but only when you are attending sci-fi and comic book conventions :P

In the Southeast most white people I know would prefer Spanish because we have so many immigrants(especially useful in the consruction/landscaping industry). You can also apply it to travel in Cebtral and South America. What the hell are you gonna with French.

wow…you guys have to get out more, or come to MA, USA. I am white and love people of all colors and races, as long as they are nice to me I will be nice to them. Sounds like you are talking about racism and I know a lot of white people are predjuice, but not all…just like there are good people of all races so there are the bad. So sad to generalize though! Too bad the whole world wasnt the same color…eh, I guess then people would find something else to divide themselves against eachother. Maybe if everyone tried a little harder to get along and looked for what they have in COMMON with people of other colors & races the world instead of focusing on the differences then the world would be a better place.

“you must love your neighbor as yourself” -Matthew 22:39
“love does not work evil to one’s neighbor, therefore love is the laws fulfillment–Romans 13:10

If you look up the definition of the word “neighbor” one meaning says “ones fellow human being”

“Continue to love your enemies and to pray for those persecuting you.”-Matthew 5:44

“Do not let yourself be conuered by the evil, but keep conquering the evil with the good.” -Romans 12:21

Being able to communicate in more than one (or even two) languages (including HTML, sign language, and morse code) increases one’s job opportunities and the size of one’s social network and list of hobbies (literature, music, and film appreciation).

But…there’s something that makes me reluctant to champion the cause for Mandarin 101 when one is six years old.

I’m Chinese (American citizen by birth). I’m fluent in Mandarin and English, have a working knowledge of French (four yrs in high school) and know random bits of various language.

I can also read and write Korean, and understand a tiny amount. Most of my multilingual abilities was brought upon by interest…not school curriculum.

Wow, yet another time I have been nailed. I didn’t realize I was sooooo white. Recycling, organic gardening, cultural pioneering… I’m not quite affluent or educated enough to fit into the other neat little niches you have so cleverly bared here. Give me time, and I too will be driving my Hybrid and shopping at Whole Foods. Until then its a used Toyota and Walmart groceries… Does Frisbee count as a co-ed sport? I do suck at it.

My little bi-racial daughter (black and white) <>, attends a language immersion school. By the way, it is located in an up-and-coming gentrified neigborhhod. (The building was formerly property of the New Orleans Public School District, with a 99% urban, poor black population. After the Hurricane, the student population had disipated, leaving the already badly neglected building vacant. Our charter leased the building from the school board and re-habed it). However, it is a public school, tuition free. 50% of the student body qualifies for free lunch. The student body is roughly 45% white, 40% black, 10% hispanic, and 5% asian. It’s total language immersion, in either French or Spanish. The school’s motto is “A Global Education for a Diverse World”. The school exists because some parents, fed up with the choice between pricy, exclusive private education and sad, depressing public education, decided to make their own school. We’re 100% parent owned and operated.

I put my daughter in the Spanish program, since I thought it was very practical. She’s fluent, and can actually use it every day, everywhere we go. (Yo hablo tambien. Soy estudiante de espanol in la universidad.) I enjoy seeing spanish speakers eyes light up with surprise and delight when my little girl speaks to them in their native tongue. I think they feel respected. I feel that learning the second largest language in the U.S. is very important for good will. I also enjoy speaking to my daughter, in Spanish, in public, to watch the other white people present squirm. It really does piss them off!

Since we live in New Orleans, French is actually in circulation. My husband is from Ethiopia, so my daughter speaks his language, Amharic, as well. I do know enough to order dinner.

Ok, I’m am done with my patronizing, self pat on the back. Not sure whether to love or hate this blog. It does seem a little mean spirited at times. But I hate those “greener than thou/social activist/I have more piercings/tats than you types” too. Almost as much as my self-loathing, liberal white guilt. Ahhh, what to do?

Rich white kids can’t help who they are and where they came from…just as with poor kids. Getting jealous and bitter towards those born with a silver spoon in their mouths not only is outrageously hypocritical, it just makes you look…well….jealous and bitter.

You should keep in mind that when white people came over here to the Americas, they left behind their much more adaptable European cultures (ie. cultures that are naturally more wont to learn multiple languages as a result of their being in very close proximity to other countries whose citizens did not want to become a “melting pot” [another thing white people like: soup!] ).

Anyway, the earliest Americans had nothing but disdain for their homelands – all the aristocracy/feudal societies/peasantry. They wanted a place where they could win, King George Damn It!

A way that they signified their hatred of the “old ways” was by “assimilating” to each other and creating a “lowest-common-denominator” culture wherein one language, one people was prized over all diversity.

That lasted for a while. And it was fun while it lasted.

Now, diversity is “king” so-to-speak in this country. Why? Well, because all kings and queens always had to know multiple languages (mostly Greek, Latin and French – Greek and Latin are too difficult for most LCD Americans to learn, and Latin’s dead, so…French it is!).

This obsession with multilingual children, in a class of people (white U.S. citizens, not 1st or 2nd generation immigrants) that is so incredibly homogenized and devoid of any true culture (hence their obsession with hip hop, po-mo feminism, apolitical jazz, etc. etc.) is really just an extension of their self-importance in a culture that’s completely BORING!

These folks see themselves as “saving” American culture from its tee-vee-addict, American Idol-watching, low-class baseline.

They are trying to revive the aristocracy through their children.

This, after their ancestors sought to destroy the aristocracy. Ironic, yes.

OK…. at this point let me say this…. I don’t care what everyone wants to speak, learn or whatever!!! Good for you all!!! Some people get so touchy iF you says your opinion and thank you to all of you that made a point to tell me that a lot of regions of Africa speak French….. again good for them….
Have wonderfull weekend all of you!!!!!!
BUON FINE SETTIMANA A TUTTI!!!!

OMG I really need to get up earlier to comment on this blog. Being number 180 does nothing for my ego. for this post I would have suggested the opposite: White People Love to speak English and make other people speak English too. (immigrants) BUT White Americans on the other hand seem to roll their eyes at real English accent… which sounds Snotty to White peoples ears.
I had a Black British friend (Ainsworth) who always got accused of faking his accent. No one believed that he was actually from England.
Sure yuppies and buppies want their children to speak French I on the other hand would be very happy with a kid that spoke with a British accent.
Perhaps I should send my darkest baby to finishing school in England. I hear the accent rubs off in no time.
that would be really cool.
oh I love this blog.

Spanish is one of the most popular college majors among white students. Especially in the current college-age population, Spanish is outrageously popular. It helps people work in education, health care and other fields where Hispanic Americans need service.

It is closer to English than, say, Chinese and is more useful in the United States, so white student flock to it.

Some more things white people like:
Biracial Children (they create their own exotic mini-mes to objectify)
Asians (esp. thin Asian women, but NOT with Asian-sounding names, also, Asian Babies [see Maddox and Pax Jolie-Pitt, Daisy True])
Thai Food
Homeschooling (this crosses political AND economic privilege lines, so it gets an A+++)
Field Hockey (and I am at a loss to understand this one)
Beauty Pageants (but rich black folk do this too, see Jack & Jill clubs)
Green Tea (and smoothies)
Think-Tanks
Cold Climates (see Seattle, Portland)
Riot Grrrl Music
Blogs (everyone’s 15 minutes of fame)
Knitting (esp. revolutionary knitters)
Composting
Magnet Schools (actually, anything involving a “separate but equal” education system fits the bill)
Tax Breaks
Women’s Collectives
Whitelocks (when white kids get dreadlocks and spend a year traveling the world, man!)
Supporting Small Business (as an alternative to big corporations, and not because you have no choice)
Madrigal choirs
Ethiopian children (see Zahara Jolie-Pitt)

In general, I think white people PREFER FOREIGN ANYTHING to American diversity (ie. I’m sure more white people would think about dating a brown-skinned person with a foreign accent, than dating a brown-skinned American. Of course, if that person is a brown-skinned upper-class American [such as myself, who speaks French and Spanish as well as Standard American English] it’s okay.

Oh, and a message for Miss Vanilla in a Chocolate City: This little sentence of yours – “I think they feel respected.” – totally dehumanizing!

Why don’t you ASK them how they feel? Ask them what it’s like to see a small black child holding hands with a white woman, speaking to them in a language that is neither of their native languages, as a gesture of “goodwill.”

Ask them how they feel about having their school taken over and suddenly made diverse (because you wouldn’t send your daughter there when it was 99% black and low-quality).

When I was in high school my parents wanted me to take Spanish because it was EASY to learn, not like French according to them, and German was just out-of-the-question because between the two there was not a single drop of German blood in them. Why that mattered to them, I don’t know because there was no Spanish or French blood in them either. I took two years of Spanish in HS and three semesters of French in college and I can’t remember words in Spanish but I can remember some in French (especially verbs-why? who knows).

Anyway, I am now the parent of teenagers and I WANT them take Spanish because it may help them someday in their careers. I wouldn’t be too upset if they had preferred French, but German? No way! I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree : ) All you people who took German DON’T get too upset b/c I am JK!!!!!

So, another reason why Canada is a white person paradise! All our kids speak english and french at least, some lucky first-gen kids get to learn their parents mother tongues too so many people are tri- and quad-lingual.. All the more reason Canada ought to get out of NAFTA and join the EU.

I do find it slightly offensive that this blog suggests that if you like any of these things, you are white (even if you’re not). BUT I am also aware that my black parents raised me to be fluent in the middle-class and hopefully upper-class white culture so…I acknowledge my inner whiteness. C’est simplement la vie aux Etats-Unis!

take it from me..white people like anything that does not make them look so “white’..so boring..which they might not be….they actually like diversity,learning new things..following trends …just like anyone else of any other color….people are just people, and all likes are subjective…the one thing they don’t like is…being considered white, and boring

Yep, I went the easy route and married a foreigner. My son speaks better Krio and Fula (from Sierra Leone) than he does English. My wife and I mostly speak Krio, so hopefully he’ll be able to keep it up as he grows older.

Spanish people (as in people from Spain) are white. They are in Europe, afterall! There are white Latinos (Latinos of European descent). So why wouldn’t white people like Spanish, if there are already white people speaking Spanish? Maybe this blog is just limited to the white experience in the U.S., in which case, it should be called “Stuff white identified people in the U.S. like,” but that’s a bit wordy.

i used to LOVE telling stories about my travels through Europe. camping on the Greek islands, staying in Hostels, having a Europass + sleeping on the trains at night. also had to talk about the museums that i went to e.g. Van Gogh in Amsterdam, Dali in Figueres, Picasso in Barcelona, Prado in Madrid, Louvre + Musée d’Orsay in Paris.

must admit that i felt SO superior to anyone who hadn’t been to Europe. also felt superior knowing that i backpacked + did it cheap.

As a white person who speaks English, Spanish, Thai, Tibetan and Chinese (although that last one is still kinda rough) my kids (if I have any. blahhhhh) will be raised asian language multi lingual. Why raise ‘em spanish multilingual when they can learn that in SCHOOL. thats just LAZY hehehehe.

My parents sent me to a French immersion school when I was younger. I am now studying International Relations and I hope to work for the U.N. one day. My parents used to showcase their little 5 year old French-speaking daughter to all of their friends like I was a zoo animal. And yes, I stopped going to the Lycee Francaise in downtown Chicago because it was too expensive. =)

Dear Fact-Finder,
I can’t tell which side of the debate you’re on but…nearly everyone whose family has been in this country for more than 4 generation is multiracial (they just don’t know it yet). When I mentioned that “white people love multiracial children” I wasn’t saying that with complete disdain – I mean, kids are cute (a lot of them anyway, not all of them). If you want to have kids, okay (but there’s a lot that need adopting!). But if you seek out a husband or wife based on their race and the way that your children will look with their genes, now that’s just wrong.
-Mel

Well, I grew up speaking two languages: Slovak & English. Slovak was from the horrid “communist countries”. So, it was frowned upon to boast that I was bilingual. Later on, I learned German, French, Portuguese, Russian lwell enough to visit & teach in the native language of the country. Since my “ears” had been opened to another language in the first place, languages were not difficult for me.

I have found that those same people who want their kids to speak another language are the kids from the same generation who was repulsed by other languages kids in my neighborhood spoke. They were all evangelicals then, and probably are the same now.

a) kids learn fancy Castillian Spanish while studying overseas. This has been mentioned before in the thread.

or

b) If they do, in fact, learn it from the housekeeper/nanny/household staff person. JACKPOT. The parents then have a concrete example of how “gifted” the child is. You know, for learning the language of the nice lady who raises it.

If the language learned from nanny-person is French, the parents may actually die from happiness. What is important to note here, is that upwardly mobile African-Americans, or plain old upper class African-Americans, also expect their “gifted” children to learn a second language from the nanny-person, but in this situation, ONLY French is acceptable.

I do think Asian languages are going to have to be next in what white people will be teaching their kids. Because too many other white kids are in French lessons already. What was that terrible SM Gellar movie? The one that was a remake of Dangerous Liasons? I think it was called “Cruel Intentions”? Anyway, in one scene she rattles off some Vietnamese to her asain housekeeper-person and then makes some comment about what a pretty language Vietnamese is. You know, because she’s not only smart enough to learn it, she’s cultured enough to appreciate it. Appreciation is the pinnacle of whiteness. The EVEREST of Whiteness, if you will.

Most of the bloggers on this site are slightly annoying. Here is how it should go, laugh, write a witty response to enhance the blog. No one cares about your uncle with bilingual kids. This is a funny site just enjoy it. Also, book deal ? Yeah ok…

Yeah! This is really funny! Racism is fu..ing hilarious, at least when you turn it on someone else. If I wrote a blog talking about “Black People” and lumped you all together I’d be fired and disgraced, but for you to make fun of my race is fu..ing hilarious. And we wonder why racism will never end…….
And yes I do understand sarcasm, and yet I find nothing funny about this.
An English Speaker only and proud of it!

I am an American born Vietnamese. When white people find out I am fluent in Vietnamese they look at me with amazement like I’m an aurora or something because I have no “accent” when I am speaking English.

This has helped me get in w/ many white people because they feel like I am their cultural enrichment.

2) If you are asian/brown/black/whatever and you think that because lots of people ride bikes or speak another language where you’re from, so you are offended because you think the writer is saying ‘you’re white’, or ‘only white do these things’, she/he is not. You take yourself too seriously.

(White people like to make sure they don’t assume writers/doctors/lawyers etc. are male.)

3) If you are asian/black/brown/whatever and you are mad that white people enjoy making fun of themselves, you also take yourself too seriously. Your indignation that only you have the right to make fun of us only intensifies the joke for me.

I agree with the comment made by Mango Girl (19) As a Black Brit who is now living in Africa, the ex-pat community pay huge to send their kids to the American British/British/French/German school(s). For black folk who like to copycat and also try to get their kids into these schools (weird isn’t it as Africans here are complaining that their own tribal languages are facing extinction but they also want their kids to learn European languages!) find it a struggle as they are always kept at the bottom of the waiting list as the schools have a ‘secret’ policy to make sure there is always rooms for the ex-pat kids. Maybe when whites live abroad – especially if it’s a Third world country, they are reminded of who and what they are.

White people treasure The New Yorker above all things save dogs. Conspicuously reading The New Yorker on the subway is a signal to others that you are smart and sophisticated. The Economist filled this role at one point, but then they went and endorsed Bush that one time which permanently damaged their reputation among white people.

Oh for heaven’s sake. This blog just reminds us that white people are not above cultural stereotypes. And hey, not all of this stuff (including today’s post) are bad! But ALL are funny. However, if today’s post stops anyone of any race from ever again saying “In my Emma’s immersion program, she is learning to cook crepes,” it will be worth it.

What about white people (Americans specifically) that sucked at foreign languages so bad, their only alternative was to start spelling things British? (favourite, colour, mum, practise, organise, cos instead of cuz…)

I am outraged by this article and many of these reactions. My kids go to a French school and the reasons why I placed them in that school were exactly the opposite of the ones mentioned in so many of these bloggs.
First ,I did want them to learn a second language. However, the greater reason was that I wanted them to be exposed to people of many races, religions and beliefs. At our school, we have francophones from Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Latin America. Every child at the school speaks at least two languages if not three. French is actually the one thing they do have in common. I do hope that if parents are placing their children in bilingual schools is not to turn them into snobs but rather to open their eyes to other cultures and beliefs. Also, if the French bilingual schools are not creating a curriculum with this goal in mind, they are wasting their time!

I would like to request that you explain to me why the Whites are so bananas over St. Patrick’s day. I know most people are into alcohol and parades but not to the degree that they tap 3 kegs at 9 am on a Saturday.

It’s refreshing to see people still cling to gross generalizations and racist commentary to make themselves feel warm and superior. With all the real problems…social, economic, weapons of mass destruction…..I can’t believe this many people actually have time to think like this.
I was raised in almost fully Hispanic neighborhoods, speak Mexican not Spanish, and know it is far more important for my children to learn math, science, tolerance, physics, patience, economics, how to stand up for what is right, etc…..than other languages.

First off, my son will never read the Times. Scondly, if he ever willingly learns French I’ll probably have to kill him and start over again. My son will NEVER learn the language of the Cheese-Eating, Surrender-Monkey.

I prefer my son to drive a pick-up and walk with a swagger thank you very much.

Funny… I learned Spanish for one main reason — so no-one could ever talk about me right in front of me (yeah, middle school rocked). Oh, it has been sooooo worth it! Nothing like hearing stuff about the blonde gringa, and then casually asking someone in Spanish to push the button on the elevator, etc. Ahhh…

That being said — French?? Really? I had no idea that was de rigeur in the suburbs. (that was unintentional irony, but I’m going with it). How odd, unless one plans to move to Canada or Africa. When visiting France, my friend and I got along just fine with combinations of English, German, and Italian. Ok, fine, we didn’t talk English, even though they understood it :) Ah France, what an odd place… People *aspire* to be French?

OMG. this is the funniest stuff i’ve read in a LONG time. and so on point.

“White people believe that if they had been given French language instruction when they were younger, their lives would have turned out very differently. Instead of living in the US, they would be living and working abroad for the United Nations or some other organization with a headquarters in Switzerland or The Hague.”

Anyone that wishes to discuss this stupid website with me personally, please call me at 212 -659-4495. Anyone on here who thinks that any of this material is funny or in some way thought provoking is a moron and when you call me, I will convince you of this or convince you that you are indeed the moron!

“I am outraged by this article and many of these reactions. My kids go to a French school and the reasons why I placed them in that school were exactly the opposite of the ones mentioned in so many of these bloggs.
First ,I did want them to learn a second language. However, the greater reason was that I wanted them to be exposed to people of many races, religions and beliefs. At our school, we have francophones from Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Latin America. Every child at the school speaks at least two languages if not three. French is actually the one thing they do have in common. I do hope that if parents are placing their children in bilingual schools is not to turn them into snobs but rather to open their eyes to other cultures and beliefs. Also, if the French bilingual schools are not creating a curriculum with this goal in mind, they are wasting their time!”

If you think this kind of ignorance and sarcasm is funny, you need to come to work with me for a couple of days. I work in an inner city school which is mostly Hispanic and Black and I spend more time trying to keep all the brown people from killing each other and hating each other because of their different levels of “Browness”. It is because people still think this CRAP is funny and teach their children this racial nonsense that most good teachers won’t come anywhere near an inner city school. I have been here for five years, and am an excellent teacher, but am about to give up and go to the suburbs where I will be appreciated and can actually teach instead of spending my time breaking up fights and trying to teach tolerance. (which by the way should be taught at home, not at school)

The reason why French is the language (along with Latin) the upper class expects its children to learn — and by extension the language the upper middle and portions of the middle class who are trying to ape what they see as upper class mores — is quite simple: that’s what the English aristocracy and upper class learn at public school (what we’d call private schools) or through being ‘privately educated’ (what we’d call home-schooled). The American WASP upper classes (classes because they’re rather different in Boston, New York-Philadelphia, and Richmond-Charleston, respectively, have always aped the English upper classes and, especially in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, intermarried with them (i.e. American heiress marries impoverished Duke or Earl or Baron).

White males often enjoy commenting on sports- formulating opinions,
theories- becoming violently angry about the quality of sports teams,
players and their skills, coaching techniques, and “what should be
done,” while often posesseing little to no athletic ability of their
own.

Latin has falling off the radar completely to such a degree that books written about Jung use it has evidence that he was some sort of Satanic Messiah-wannabe because he could actually hold lengthly conversations in Latin and ‘everyone knows’ Latin is the language of Pagans, Witches & Devil worshipers’ et al.

By enlarge pagans are the only interested parties vis-a-vis using Latin on a quotidian basis as it were. They are most unique in this regard.

So unless you plan on scaring up a Black Mass yer barking up the wrong tree cat-wise.

Why are people so bothered by this website? Almost everything the author points out or ‘makes fun of’ are good things. Learning a second language, recycling, riding a bicycle, etc. are not things to be ashamed of, even though they are funny to joke about.

If only we, ‘white people,’ could convince other people to do the same goofy things that we enjoy so much.

The Spanish vs. French debate is very interesting, and one the I have jibed my francophone loving friends for quite a bit. I actually feel like the current trend among global citizen/social justice minded parents is to encourage their kids to learn Spanish or Chinese, since it will be infinitely more useful in the future. Even at Yale, that bastion of old white culture that it still is, there are just as many kids learning Spanish as French. Being from Texas and growing up around Spanish as kid, I naturally drifted toward the language, and I am so grateful that I did. It has been an amazing journey which has taken me across Latin America, in countries as different as any earth, such as Brazil and Argentina, Mexico, Guatemala and Ecuador. I would love to go to Spain someday, but I hardly think that it will be superior to the places and people I have met across these two continents. There is an incredible world of diversity right in our back yard, and I am amazed how people in the States are still so oblivious to it. The Europeans certainly aren’t, and they are usually the ones I run into down here. Also, all due respect to Spain Spanish, but who the hell wants to speak with a lisp?! It is not attractive people–at all, at all. Mexican Spanish and Ecuadorian are two of the most beautiful forms of language that I have encountered. Learn Argentine lumfardo at your own peril! And Portuguese is probably the most beautiful floral language in the world. It’s like honey. Brazil is the real jem in Latin America that most people (even many latin americanists) still have yet to discover.

So sad but true! Ha ha. I recently told my husband that I wanted our future kids to have a Spanish speaking nanny.
Spanish can also be OK if you talk about travelling to Argentina. It’s cool like Spain and seems slightly exotic. But those are pretty much the only two countries that impress the majority of white people… ; )

how abou this for a blog idea: “white people like to give weird-ass names to their off-spring”.
And if they ever meet another white person with an unusual weird-ass name they will not be able to abstain from commenting on it, and trying to guess its origin: “Shmacey? Wow, what an unusual name! Is that Orcadian?”
No, dip shit. It’s not.

Actually it is very sad that parents that speak a language do not pass it on to their kids. If you consider that learning a foreign language costs years and big $$$ later in life (if that is possible) it might be better to make sure your kid speaks your native. In general immigrant parents devalue the value of their home language. 20 years ago Chinese was not particularly useful, funny how that changed.

I’m Asian. But I look white because I’m more French. And I sometimes I act black, though it doesn’t fit. I speak Spanish. I want to marry a Frenchman and die in the arms of a Russian. I think Russian is pretty posh and someday it will have its hay-day. I like eating rice and sometimes French fries too. Spanish fries are even better. And Vietnamese Toast is the best for breakfast. Have you ever dated a Mexican? They will love you like no other. And the French feed your soul with their eyes. Russians will hold a gun to your head while they tell you how beautiful you are. Asians look at me like I’m crazy when I buy 25 pound bags of jasmine rice. Jews like my cynicism. Colombians love my ass – it moves a lot when I dance. Ecuadorians like my eyes – mysterious and watery just like their famous little Darwinian island. I like people in general and I guess I’m kind of white or maybe Native American, but no one really knows I just look dark and distant. And I want my kids to speak 4 languages, so I will have to become a Mormon in order to marry 3 people. I really don’t like Utah though.

“The Spaniards’ big mistake was giving out their fine European surnames to all the people they civilized.”

Seriously, this comment has fascism written all around, or just plain ignorance. First off, the Spanish colonists NEVER [gave] out their “fine European surnames,” we (Latin Americans) inherited these surnames. The English settlers that came to the U.S. were the one’s that ‘gave out’ their surnames to the African slaves. The Spanish on the other hand pretty much stuck their penis in anything that moved when they came to this continent, primarily Amerindian women already here and female African slaves, thus creating a vast mixture of humans composed of different races who now happen to be Latin Americans. The real melting pot in this continent is not found north of the Rio Grande, but the regions south of it. For those not familiar with Latin American history/culture, the 3 pillars of Latin America in terms of peoples, are African, European, and Amerindian. Later on there was a great influx of Asians that found their way to this region as well as Middle Easterners. The Spanish themselves are not pure bloods, they were under Arabian/North African/Muslim rule for almost 800 years!!!!!! Not to mention that they have Latin (Roman) blood. That is why Latin Americans come in all shapes, sizes and colors although most people in the world automatically link Latino with ‘brown.’ So Ferdinand, we have Spanish surnames by birth right, not entitlement.

In regards to “all the people they civilized”…..its obvious you have a eurocentric view of the world. The cultures that flourished in Mexico before the arrival of the Spanish were highly ‘civilized,’ advanced and substantial. True, the Spanish brought european technology which eased life in the new world, but they also brought death, disease and
useless ideology like Christianity. Not to mention that they enslaved all native populations, but I guess that’s highly civilized in your opinion.

Odd. I’ve been struggling to teach myself Spanish off and on for years (poor attention span), and it’s never occurred to me to think of it as inferior to French. Other people do? My thoughts have always been, ‘ooh, Spanish, that’ll be the most useful!’.

Odd. I’ve been struggling to teach myself Spanish off and on for years (poor attention span), and it’s never occurred to me to think of it as inferior to French. Other people do? My thoughts have always been, ‘ooh, Spanish, that’ll be the most useful!’.

Flores – The native peoples of the Americas were just as violent as the Europeans who conquered them. People are people. Unless you think that Europeans are somehow differerent than all other people. Which, of course, would be racist of you. The only difference between the native peoples and the colonizing Europeans was the technology generated by a more complex and advanced society and culture.

One of the big reasons, aside from geography and the presence of animals that were easily domesticated, that Europeans were so dominant, is that they adopted technology from other cultures. Like mathematics and navigation instruments from the Arabs and ruddered ships and gun powder from the Chinese. It was Europeans willingness to adopt foreign technology that lead to their domination which continues today.

Native peoples murdered each other and stole each others land thousands of years before Europeans ever arrived. People are people, man. We’re all the same. Get the chip off your shoulder.

PS #276 There are so many Mexicans that somehow have Spanish surnames, and it’s totally obvious they are amerindian and don’t have one drop of European blood. The tons of Mayans that work in Cancun, and have Spanish surnames are a perfect example of this.

What percent of Filipinos have European genes to go along with their surnames? It’s probably less than 1%.

Reading this blog is becoming a ritual for me. But really, some of these people (the – forgot to take their medication humorless anal retentive – crowd) is slowly eroding this wonderful triumphant satirical community you have created.

To be fair…..What about the genocide in Darfur- perpetrated by blacks? What about the Armenian Genocide – perpetrated by Turks? What about the thousands of years of genocidal tribal warfare in sub-saharan Africa?

If you think Europeans, or their descendants, are any more or less violent than any other race you are a racist.

You all need a little less indoctrination and a little more education.

– expensive photo shoots of their families (esp. newborn children)
– having friends from other countries (and loudly pointing it out to anyone who will listen – ie. “well, MY FRIEND ANNE FROM KENYA says …”) it’s way better than just having a black friend – THAT friend is an “authentic minority”
– inanely debating whether or not this blog and other writings of a similar nature are, in fact, “racist”
– the o.c.
– gilmore girls
– any other show where there are only one or two (incredibly stereotypical) minorities (if any)
– debating the left/right leanings of cnn and fox news
– rainbow flip flops and birkenstocks
– the leno/letterman debate
– debating all manner of stupid things
– graduating magna/summa cum laude (if this can be done while also maintaining high status within their fraternity/sorority as a beer pong champ, so much the better)
– having to “check their calendar” before they can agree to do ANYTHING, even having dinner as a family
– saying, “i have [depression, bipolar, ocd, adhd, dyslexia, a learning disability, drinking problem, etc.], thus i should be excused for any and all unacceptable behavior”

The Arabs synthesised mathematical theory from the pre-existing Greek and Indian schools of mathematics, though they did have many of their own contributions. It was the Hindis who invented precalculus.

“It was Europeans willingness to adopt foreign technology that lead to their domination which continues today.”

Hasty generalisation.

It was the small Italian states — Milan, Florence, etc. who rapidly adopted those weapons, as well as the Turks (who were fighting against other vast empires). Whereas the French could afford to deploy great flanking testudos of immense rows of gendarmes and pikemen, the small Italian city-states had to utilise every technological advantage they could find in order not to get wiped out.

The rest of the European nations were rather slow to adopt new technology.

Anonymous: FYI: Facism has different implications here and in the Latin America. Like you said, if the term is tossed around here, you’re tagged as a liberal, in Latin America is quite different due to the fact that race is treated differently there. Just as ‘liberal’ is used differently here and in the Europe.

You hit the nail on the head with the learning disability thing. My parents had me diagnosed young and it was a great socially acceptable excuse for my outlandish behavior (which I engaged in because they didn’t beat my ass).

Now as an adult I have used my psychobabble of a disorder to excuse myself for my continued outlandish behavior. Who says you can’t play the system to your advantage? :D

I wonder if anyone made fun of Victorians and their narrowness back in those days, or if it was only afterwards. It is a funny kind of neo-Victorianism, isn’t it? Total certainty they have the world and human beings figured out, that they stand astride all of it as beacons of pure sweet reason (but with due false humility that exists only to absolve themselves of their arrogance). This whole elaborate, rigid, ultimately pointless set of rules about what is fashionable, what is decent, what is good and sacred and what is profane.

They believed they were the bright, shining beacons of an enlightened age, too. What they really were was the side effect of power and prosperity, second-tier intellects from the middle class with extra money and time on their hands, desperately hungry for class and status. And, decades after they passed, they became the very definition of narrowness and arrogance.

Which is the certain fate of the modern liberal, of course. It’s already happening. And none too soon for my taste.

#295 – perhaps the rest of Western Europe was slower to adopt some technology. However, they did adopt it and improve upon it (using gun powder in guns, for example) before non-Europeans and implemented that technology with devastating effectiveness. And that’s the real point, isn’t it?

Tom’s of Maine
Autistic Kids (and writing books about them)
Cardigan Sweaters
Shetland Sweaters
Eco-friendly Clothing (ie. Simple Shoes, etc.)
Hemp Bracelets (and any Ethnic Jewelry)
Using the word Ethnic as a euphemism for Black
Using the term “Inner-City” as a euphemism for Black
Martha’s Vineyard
“The Morning Paper”
JFK Jr.
The Beatles
Star Trek
Co-Op Grocers
“Going Paperless”
Art History
Guilt (often misplaced)
Making words like “Ebonics” more PC by calling it African American Vernacular English
The name “Molly” for a girl
The name “Taylor” for either gender

I should start my own damn blog!
-Mel

PS – To Hannah, comment 294, I would add Rainbow Anything (ie. Tie Dye, and not just flip flops)

When white people get their kids misdiagnosed with learning/behavior disabilities in order to gain special treatment, it usually results with things like an extra 90 minutes to complete the SAT.

When Asian/Black/Hispanic kids get misdiagnosed with learning/behavior disabilities, it is usually because a teacher has a bias against them and wants to put them in remedial classes, not give them an added advantage.

So, use the system. But know that the system was made to benefit you in the first place.

“Some white doctor said that Aids came from someone having sex with a monkey….
….WORD?!?!
You either have sex with humans or monkeys. Once you decide to fuck a monkey that’s a firm decision, there’s no going back. Your not going to have sex with a chimp on monday and than call up Charlene on Thursday.
‘Yo dog, you wanna go to the club tonight?’
‘Naw, Im’a chill at home with my monkey…
Do you no how long it took me to train this monkey to suck my dick, without peeling it? Last week I taught Chim-Chim to jerk me off with his feet, only a monkey can show you that kind of love and tenderness.'”
-Dave Chappelle “Live at the Filmore”

a chant heard on the playground of Irvington Elementary School in NE Portland, OR. USA:
“It’s a fight, it’s a fight, between a nigger and a white, but the white can’t fight so the nigger’s alright.”
class of ’89

“Speak up, please, anyone who can speak Swedish that wasn’t born in Sweden or forced to move there.”

I have no Swedish blood, but went to a school started by Swedish immigrants at the end of the 19th Century. There were a ton of Swedish-Americans there and everyone “wanted to learn” swedish, but few did.

I studied there for a semester and learned a lot. And I learned Spanish in High School. I’m extremely white.

i think it’s really interesting that so many people find this blog offensive. i can understand how it might be seen as propagating emphasis on differences along racial lines, but i think there are some problems with this sum-up.

one, when i read “white people,” i understand it as referring to the privileged upper-middle class of America, who, similarly to the “bourgeois bohemians” of France (good point L), have too much money lying around and have the funds and energy to care about the environment, liberal politics, etc. and we’d just be fooling ourselves in thinking that race does not exist in America and that it does not still affect the way people live, in general terms. still, i’d probably be in agreement that referring to this population as “white people” is just asking for an uproar, even though, as i think it should be read, it is pushing in our faces the fact that, for all our shenanigans in attempting to work against it, there are inequalities built into our social system.

two, there is no single American culture, and to hide behind the constant assertion that we all live with equal rights and in the same world is foolish. yes, equalities in opportunities need to be constantly fought for, but we should acknowledge that we do not all have the same history (this is not only a racial question).

three, this blog is pointing out all the ridiculous qualities and worries of this privileged class in humor, which i (who have found way too many things on here that are in my life) see in one light as a way of putting perspective on what really can be silly in the big picture (“awareness” #18 anyone? oof, that one hurt).

“However, they did adopt it and improve upon it (using gun powder in guns, for example) before non-Europeans and implemented that technology with devastating effectiveness. And that’s the real point, isn’t it?”

This is such a horrible misconception that you can tell anyone who says this cannot have a good background in history.

Myth 1: The Chinese invented gunpowder but were slow to use it as a weapon.

This is false (see fire lance).

Myth 2: The Europeans pioneered the more modern firearms and artillery (beginning with arquebuses).

The history of the arquebus’s invention is obscure for a reason — in fact firearm development probably reinforced each other for a time.

What you must realise is a few things:

Firearms were often not standardised before the 17th century. This was China’s flaw as well as a major pain in many European battles. Near the end of the Ming Dynasty in 1644, 55% of Chinese soldiers had firearms, but they were of so many different makes and models that maintenance and training became inefficient. Whereas it became easier for Europe to mass produce them. This applies to cannons. Hence, they well had the capability of making cannons, but without the principle of mass production one suffers a military disadvantage.

Hence, as you know from economics — comparative advantage. Whereas in the early Ming era Chinese armies produced most of their own firearms (entire regiments bore arquebuses) and pioneered the 3-firing-line formation (2 reloading, one firing at any moment), by the end of the 16th century most of the guns were imported.

You should also realise at the same time, France and many other European nations were also suffering from not having well-organised firearm units. The Turkish janissaries were the model for European armies at the time *gasp*.

You should realise that Japan had in fact, one of the most advanced firearm-equipped armies during 1600; in fact they developed many precursors to firing line tactics. The Japanese were very good at reverse-engineering existing foreign guns and making their own (in contrast to the Chinese).

Of course, at the time, firearms were seen as the equivalent to nuclear weapons — really destructive and a threat to honour — after some horrific battles, even anti-shogunate forces saw reason to comply with the Shogunate’s order to formally ban firearms, just like we tend to try to disarm nukes today.

So please you infidels, THINK TWICE before you make stupid uninformed remarks and sweeping generalisations, spewing out the nonsense myths you were taught as a child.

I absolutely love speaking Spanish, and have busted my ass to be become fluent as an adult. I have noticed that many people (not just whites) get nervous/offended when it is spoken around them because their egocentric view causes them to assume they are the subject of the conversation. I haven’t noticed such a strong reaction to any other language; however I think it’s just an insecurity issue more than a race thing.

#315 – nice cut and paste. You really shouldn’t plagarize the writings of others and pass them off as you own. You should also read what you steal first.

“You should realise that Japan had in fact, one of the most advanced firearm-equipped armies during 1600; in fact they developed many precursors to firing line tactics. The Japanese were very good at reverse-engineering existing foreign guns and making their own (in contrast to the Chinese).”

Please edify me about the many and fabulous functional, military firearms that were invented and developed by non-Europeans. I would also be very interested in the many Chinese victories over their enemies with their mighty “fire lances.”

Oh please dear kafir, enlighten me as to where I may have copy and pasted my information from. In fact, I was reciting most of these facts from memory, so I am quite amazed at your allegation.

“I would also be very interested in the many Chinese victories over their enemies with their mighty “fire lances.””

Google would work for one, you Western infidel.

You know, they are quite well-known even to any true history amateur as well as professionals.

That you simplify the complex development of the firearm — whose various innovations were truly cosmopolitan with contributions from India, Arabia, Japan, etc. in addition to Europe and China, only shows your frog-in-the-well ignorance.

“Fuck the bullshit, whether from the hill or from the pulpit, today I put my money, on the fall of every culprit”

I know what I love, anarchy, and all the individuality, independence, moral conscience, and righteous reverence it implies. What’s the point, when facts predict your assertion is denied. By the hands of time, and human kind, in the pursuit of all paths and works divine. A journey to the heart of god, his nature is all mine, the shared delight.

No divide, along skin pigmentary lines. Inherited from our fathers ascent through time. From ethicity or illusory cultural lies.

“Fuck the bullshit, whether from the hill or from the pulpit, today I put my money, on the fall of every culprit”

I know what I love, anarchy, and all the individuality, independence, moral conscience, and righteous reverence it implies. What’s the point, when facts predict your assertion is denied. By the hands of time, and human kind, in the pursuit of all paths and works divine. A journey to the heart of god, his nature is all mine, the shared delight.

No divide, along skin pigmentary lines. Inherited from our fathers ascent through time. From ethicity or illusory cultural lies.

This is a very “coastal” (i.e. East Coast) view of language learning. Coming from deep in the Midwest, the home of demographic whiteness, learning a language (especially French!) is considering overachieving. Spanish is by far the most popular language, and very few parents dream of their children reading the New Yorker and listening to Coltrane. As a learner of German, French, Italian, Portuguese and Kiswahili, I am an extreme oddity back home and very few people are genuinely impressed. They would only understand this love for languages if I learned and only learned Spanish.

The one kernel of truth in this post is that I begrudged a monolingual home!

It must be very frustrating for you to belong to a religion that tells you non-believers are beneath you, that they are to be converted, killed or made to pay tribute to your greatness, when such a large part of your world doesn’t even have indoor plumbing or electricity.

Do you ever wonder why Arab/Muslim nations that aren’t sitting on a pool of oil, are so backward, so poor, so ignorant? Ruled by tinpot dictators and religious nonsense? Do you ever wonder why you and your “culture” are on the outside looking in as secular cultures become wealthier and wealthier? We put a man on the moon forty years ago. Many of your faith don’t even acknowledge that we live in a heliocentric universe.

Don’t you ever wonder why these people that your book says are inferior to you are so much more advanced? Do you want to know the answer? Its because of the ignorance of people who use words like Kafir and Infidel to describe people who don’t believe what they believe.

Don’t you have some women to forcibly circumcise or a beheading to go to?

Because of your racist views and religious fundamentalism you will always be on the outside looking in. Looking in at freedom, prosperity and honor….all things your culture lacks.

i think the french fetish exists more on the east coast, home to one locus of white culture. in the pacific northwest, our whiteys are pretty different. we’re down with spanish, and think chinese is pretty tight too.

I must confess that I am white of the lilly variety and insecure. It is reassuring that whites are finally getting some representation here for the concerns about being talked about in other languages. It is bad enough to be talked about in a language you can understand, even if it is grammatically incorrect, but it is just hostile when it is in a foreign language. I have a feeling that this is going to turn into a movement!

Number 19 You are right. I am a second generation american. My parents both came from asia. when they came here they thought that they shouldn’t teach me my ancestral language so that I could assimilate better. However the only thing that this has accomplished is that now I can not speak to my extended family in their native language. It is a major disconvenience not knowing my parents native language.

This whole blog is just really fucking racist and mean spirited. Ya’ll are a bunch of insecure-to-the-point-of-self-depricating pricks. How about a little respectful appreciation of the myriad of cultures that cover our earth? Oh wait, you couldn’t do that because ya’ll are a bunch of insecure-to-the-point-of-self-depricating pricks. It’s sad. I mean, you’re making it seem like well-educated children are something that only white people want but only for self-serving, 80s-yuppy, bonfire-of-the-vanities reasons. Which is sort of preposterous, really. I mean, I’m mad about the war in Iraq too, but we should END the hostility, not redirect it. QUIT SERVING YOUR “WISH-I-WAS-A-REAL-INTELLECTUAL”-VANITY YOU FUCKING PIG BEFORE I COME OVER THERE AND TAR AND FEATHER YOUR BOYISH ASS! (see i can make hostile jokes, too. but it doesn’t make us feel better now, does it?)

The problem here, as I see it is that this blog attempts to generalize some facets of the liberal, middle to upper class, urban culture in the US–not “white” people per se; thus its more a commentary on a certain political section of an economic class within urban US culture, which happen to be mostly white. However, this is a much smaller subgroup within that much larger “white” ethnic category. This makes it misleading and inaccurate.

This type of targeted satire is not new and usually more focused. You may recall the commonly done jokes about “poor souther whites, along the lines of..”you know you are a redneck, if…” Marx himself did something of the sort when he referred to “rural idiocy” although he was also referring to a structural productive relations engendering these social relations who regarded as primitive, backward, ignorant. Of course, all generalizations.

Being a native swedish speaker I am flabbergasted that Swedish goton the list. It’s a very, very tricky language (ask the 1 million or so immigrants we have) but if someone would like to come to Fortess Europe and learn it you’re welcome!

I enjoyed reading this Anti-White hate-blog. Since I graduated college, I haven’t had to live around self-hating White people so this really brings me back. Don’t forget to make fun of rural White farmers! That’s a comedy goldmine that’s never been touched!

Well, know that’s why I married an illegal Mexican immigrant. Why buy the cow if you can get the milk for free? And it’s totally why I send my kids to an inner city school in the ‘hood with the children of immigrants from Spanish speaking countries, Poland, and the Arab world. Man, you NAIL me.

You Westerners jumping to conclusions are so hilarious.
I am not in fact, Muslim. I simply sympathise with the Muslim faith because many of my friends are (I am in fact, Christian). A surface manifestation of this is my appreciation of Malay and Semitic cuisine, languages and various other such elements.

Anyway, your amazing is only proof for further Western myopia … please, in the words of the Good Book, take the plank out of your own eye before you kafirs command people to take sawdust particles out of their eyes.

I toss the word “kafir” around because it’s such a fun insult. Kafir, kafir, kafir…! I hope you realise the Catholic Church uses the word infidel too.

Of course, you myopic Americans don’t realise you don’t have to be Muslim to use the word “kafir”. Your conclusion is representative of the myopic ignorance of your nationality and American narrow-mindedness.

“that they are to be converted, killed or made to pay tribute to your greatness, when such a large part of your world doesn’t even have indoor plumbing or electricity.”

Dear infidel:

1. There is nothing morally wrong with evangelism. Your good friend Pat Robertson does it all the time.

2. 50% of American homes use SEPTIC TANKS. Now, isn’t that the very epitome of backwardness!

3. What do you mean, “my world?” Again, your arrogant presumptions (natural on the part of your MYOPIC AMERICANNESS) fails when you consider that a) I am a Singaporean b) I hold an American green card c) I will be attending one of your nation’s top schools while d) you linger in backwardness. Irony!

4. 55% of your people are obese. That is decadence at its best.

5. I am a polyglot. You are most likely, not. This is why my culture’s hot. This is why your culture’s not. Loser.

6. Your failure to recognise what “galoisien” means hints at not only your lack of linguistic knowledge, but the lack of a conceptual grasp of Galois theory, anything involving groups or sets, Riemannian manifolds, non-Euclidean geometry …. I don’t know who’s more backwards…

7. I can calculate the stress forces on the water pipes in your bathroom while you as an American, are incapable of conserving toilet paper.

9. Your use of “Arab/Muslim” as though they are interchangeable reflects your ignorance of anthropology and the basic ethnic makeup of the world. I bet you’re a American/Texan LOL.

10. Your imprecise use of the term “dictator” to represent oligarchies, monarchies and a wide variety of other political systems that are not even de facto dictatorships can only be representative of your countrymen’s utter ignorance of world affairs. OMG THE HAPSBURGS WERE NAZIS LOL.

11. I know more about your own nation’s history than you do. If this is not the ultimate sign of American backwardness, I don’t know what is.

12. “Sitting on a pool of oil” represents the failure of your American brain to understand the basic mechanics behind oil production. Did you know, before the war, Iraq had one of the best education systems in the Middle East, even rivalling Israel? The literacy rate was higher for girls (96%) than it was for boys (92%) …

15. “Its because of the ignorance of people who use words like Kafir and Infidel to describe people who don’t believe what they believe.”

Perhaps you should first realise when someone is tossing what is known as “argument to the man” (which is not a fallacy but rather an appeal when coupled with logical arguments).

I use the word kafir to draw a cultural distinction as a form of cultural retaliation. Kafir. Kafir. Kafir.

16. Fundamentalism and racism are two different things. To be fundamentalist is to advocate purity and going back to the fundamentals. Fundamentalism is not a rejection of separation of Church and State — something you Americans have failed to appreciate.

I am in fact, a Christian fundamentalist.

The failure of you to anticipate this is representative of your countrymen (or did you think I was talking of cuntry matters,
madam?). No wonder your CUNTrymen failed to anticipate 9/11 LOL.

You Westerners jumping to conclusions are so hilarious.
I am not in fact, Muslim. I simply sympathise with the Muslim faith because many of my friends are (I am in fact, Christian). A surface manifestation of this is my appreciation of Malay and Semitic cuisine, languages and various other such elements.

Anyway, your amazing is only proof for further Western myopia … please, in the words of the Good Book, take the plank out of your own eye before you kafirs command people to take sawdust particles out of their eyes.

I toss the word “kafir” around because it’s such a fun insult. Kafir, kafir, kafir…! I hope you realise the Catholic Church uses the word infidel too.

Of course, you myopic Americans don’t realise you don’t have to be Muslim to use the word “kafir”. Your conclusion is representative of the myopic ignorance of your nationality and American narrow-mindedness.

“that they are to be converted, killed or made to pay tribute to your greatness, when such a large part of your world doesn’t even have indoor plumbing or electricity.”

Dear infidel:

1. There is nothing morally wrong with evangelism. Your good friend Pat Robertson does it all the time.

2. 50% of American homes use SEPTIC TANKS. Now, isn’t that the very epitome of backwardness!

3. What do you mean, “my world?” Again, your arrogant presumptions (natural on the part of your MYOPIC AMERICANNESS) fails when you consider that a) I am a Singaporean b) I hold an American green card c) I will be attending one of your nation’s top schools while d) you linger in backwardness. Irony!

4. 55% of your people are obese. That is decadence at its best.

5. I am a polyglot. You are most likely, not. This is why my culture’s hot. This is why your culture’s not. Loser.

6. Your failure to recognise what “galoisien” means hints at not only your lack of linguistic knowledge, but the lack of a conceptual grasp of Galois theory, anything involving groups or sets, Riemannian manifolds, non-Euclidean geometry …. I don’t know who’s more backwards…

7. I can calculate the stress forces on the water pipes in your bathroom while you as an American, are incapable of conserving toilet paper.

10. Your imprecise use of the term “dictator” to represent oligarchies, monarchies and a wide variety of other political systems that are not even de facto dictatorships can only be representative of your countrymen’s utter ignorance of world affairs. OMG THE HAPSBURGS WERE NAZIS LOL.

11. I know more about your own nation’s history than you do. If this is not the ultimate sign of American backwardness, I don’t know what is.

12. “Sitting on a pool of oil” represents the failure of your American brain to understand the basic mechanics behind oil production. Did you know, before the war, Iraq had one of the best education systems in the Middle East, even rivalling Israel? The literacy rate was higher for girls (96%) than it was for boys (92%) …

15. “Its because of the ignorance of people who use words like Kafir and Infidel to describe people who don’t believe what they believe.”

Perhaps you should first realise when someone is tossing what is known as “argument to the man” (which is not a fallacy but rather an appeal when coupled with logical arguments).

I use the word kafir to draw a cultural distinction as a form of cultural retaliation. Kafir. Kafir. Kafir.

16. Fundamentalism and racism are two different things. To be fundamentalist is to advocate purity and going back to the fundamentals. Fundamentalism is not a rejection of separation of Church and State — something you Americans have failed to appreciate.

I am in fact, a Christian fundamentalist.

The failure of you to anticipate this is representative of your countrymen (or did you think I was talking of cuntry matters,
madam?). No wonder your CUNTrymen failed to anticipate 9/11 LOL.

10. Your imprecise use of the term “dictator” to represent oligarchies, monarchies and a wide variety of other political systems that are not even de facto dictatorships can only be representative of your countrymen’s utter ignorance of world affairs. OMG THE HAPSBURGS WERE NAZIS LOL.

11. I know more about your own nation’s history than you do. If this is not the ultimate sign of American backwardness, I don’t know what is.

12. “Sitting on a pool of oil” represents the failure of your American brain to understand the basic mechanics behind oil production. Did you know, before the war, Iraq had one of the best education systems in the Middle East, even rivalling Israel? The literacy rate was higher for girls (96%) than it was for boys (92%) …

10. Your imprecise use of the term “dictator” to represent oligarchies, monarchies and a wide variety of other political systems that are not even de facto dictatorships can only be representative of your countrymen’s utter ignorance of world affairs. OMG THE HAPSBURGS WERE NAZIS LOL.

11. I know more about your own nation’s history than you do. If this is not the ultimate sign of American backwardness, I don’t know what is.

12. “Sitting on a pool of oil” represents the failure of your American brain to understand the basic mechanics behind oil production. Did you know, before the war, Iraq had one of the best education systems in the Middle East, even rivalling Israel? The literacy rate was higher for girls (96%) than it was for boys (92%) …

337 Anonymong – ‘Marx himself did something of the sort when he referred to “rural idiocy” although he was also referring to a structural productive relations engendering these social relations who regarded as primitive, backward, ignorant. ‘

You utter spanner. This site is about PEOPLE LIKE YOU. We don’t need to know what, exactly, you have to say about any issue – we know you will adopt the ‘intelligentsia default position’. Your views, opinions, lifestyle choices etc etc can be gleaned from a handful of media outlets. You are part of the ‘educated beyond your intelligence’ masses that the real smart cookies laugh at.

14. Many of your faith don’t even acknowledge that we live in a heliocentric universe.

xkcd.com/285/

(i.e. [citation needed])

15. “Its because of the ignorance of people who use words like Kafir and Infidel to describe people who don’t believe what they believe.”

Perhaps you should first realise when someone is tossing what is known as “argument to the man” (which is not a fallacy but rather an appeal when coupled with logical arguments).

I use the word kafir to draw a cultural distinction as a form of cultural retaliation. Kafir. Kafir. Kafir.

16. Fundamentalism and racism are two different things. To be fundamentalist is to advocate purity and going back to the fundamentals. Fundamentalism is not a rejection of separation of Church and State — something you Americans have failed to appreciate.

I am in fact, a Christian fundamentalist.

The failure of you to anticipate this is representative of your countrymen (or did you think I was talking of cuntry matters,
madam?). No wonder your CUNTrymen failed to anticipate 9/11 LOL.

White couples love to have only one child then write books on the advantages enjoyed by only children. The kid gets to have his very own room, his very own tricycle and, of course, his very own MBA with bilingual training in English-Mandarin which will make him decisively competitive in the global economy.

At a banquet celebrating a killer deal with his inscrutable counterparts in Beijing which will..er..”benefit” both parties, someone is bound to bring up the topic of China’s one-child policy. “Aha!,” he’ll say, “so you’ve read my parents’ book!”

Hello darling!
Thank you for this latest gem!
I speak French and Swedish fluently as I lived, studied and worked their in my twenties, now that I’m in my thirties, I love living in Asia! My future children will speak many languages as their father will probably belong to a foreign country. I love this blog.

French was the most popular language to study during my secondary school days–years ago. At that time, it was considered the most useful language for world travel; the language of diplomats and so forth.

Today, students are on waiting lists to study Spanish in most American secondary schools. Many American communities have Hispanic communities, and reflect their growing bi-lingual culture.

This situation is reflected by the jobs which advertise for applicants with Spanish/English language skills, the automatic phone messages and purchase directions given in both languages, and (again) the large number of Spanish language classes taught and Spanish college majors, in comparison to other foreign languages.

As I began to read this blog I found it funny but then it got sad at times because the comments some folks make are real and a shame that we still have such hate. Anyway, for those who feel Spanish is a disgrace and shouldn’t be spoken here – I hope you aren’t one those “white” people who go to Cancun or such and expect those Mexican’s to serve you and speak to you in English. We should be glad that those “cartoons” have some words in Spanish so are kids won’t grow up ignorant, many of whites don’t even know their cultural background. BTW, isn’t it funny how many countries have signs in ENGLISH to cater whites? and so many countries study more than a language or two? No wonder the French dislike “Americans” – I can say it’s embarrassing that we are considered close minded.
Cheers!
someone who speaks ENGLISH, Spanish and French and trying to learn Italian and Dutch!
Peace. and don’t forget to Vote .

#79 squash
no, not the vegetable, the sport.
more hip than tennis, lacrosse and rowing. squash is the way to go to get those white kids into college nowadays. any old country club has golf and tennis, but squash, that takes a special kind of expensive country club or private school.

Thank you for doing the same thing that most whites do to people of color all the time. I see it is as uncomfortable for white people to be put in one box with simple yet authoritative- sounding rhetoric. Although I do not agree with some of the things you said on NPR, think this blog is wonderful. If you ever run out if ideas let me know.

I hope the readers of your blog will think next time they say: “Black people……” “Hispanic people……” “Muslims (who are actually considered white by federal law)……” “Asian people…..’

To the people who are angry about these stereotypes, I say suck it up and stop whining. That is what we are told every time a grossly stereotypical comments are made about us!

Multilingual is where the world is heading to, if not already there. The languages of choice are up to what you want to get out of life, wether it’s English, Spanish, Dutch, sign language, music, C++ or ActionScript, simply ensure they are what you really need or want to do. Oh, and instead of focusing on learning a foreign language focus on experiencing a foreign culture… it’s what traveling is all about.

I’d much rather help my kid to develop a very advanced command of the English language and a large vocabulary instead of forcing him or her to learn some “vanity tongue” like French. Being able to awkwardly speak a few phrases in another European language might impress other upper middle class liberal jackasses, but it would have no real value in America outside of that. Yes, sadly it is reasonable to learn Spanish here for practical purposes, but acquiring basically any other second tongue for domestic use is snotty and pointless.

If multilingual is what your are after marry a a Filipino who is Chinese, Visayan and works for a call center. Why? If he/she is Chinese then he/she should know Mandarin and Fookien from primary to secondary school. If he/she is Visayan then he/she knows Visayan dialect and Tagalog which both has a totally different grammar structure. And if he/she works for a call center then he/she can speak English with a more or less convincing accent of an American,Canadian and/or Australian depending on which call center account he/she has worked for.

Ok my writing sucks in foriegn langauges, but as a whitey i do enjoy studying them, even beyond ordering in resturants. As for my French, I learned it in Quebec and West Africa (Burkina Faso) so it s not up to snobby par.

“How is that backwards? Most non-White nations (India, Africa, SE Asia) pump their raw sewage into their rivers and their water supply!!”

That’s more stereotyped than a stereoisomer.

I am an inhabitant of an SE-Asian nation (Singapore) and we use reverse osmosis.

We have centralised rubbish chutes, a centralised education system, a centralised urban planning authority with regional commercial centralisation to reduce unnecessary traffic into the CBD, and naturally central water treatment, with central desalination.

India isn’t Africa — central water treatment is found in most areas.

Whereas in some parts of the US, you don’t even get running water, and some residential areas even rely on wells. How backwards is that!

Americans don’t even have a proper centralised national education system (No Child Left Behind is a joke).

Also, your definition of “non-white” is interesting. I hope you realise that much of India has Caucasian gene flow. Cuz you know, the whole Indo-European migrations and all. Sanskrit is one of the most conservative Indo-European languages, beating your kafirs of classical languages Latin and Greek. (That’s right, they’re INFIDEL languages because they failed to be FAITHFUL to many Proto=Indo-European features. And now they’re DEAD.)

LOL — this is hilarious! I was not happy as a white mama when my white girls chose to learn French. OTOH, it was the only foreign language our cheap ass rural school district offered. Que? We in the middle of MISSOURI… how many French speaking people are there around here? I was happy though that they did want to learn some other tongue other than ‘Hey, bubba, whatchoo doin 2morrow, wanna go muddin’?” or ‘Hey, bitch, wanna come check out the suspension on my truck?’ And the one girlie o mine DID go to France in her senior year of college. And my other girlie is gonna go to Russia with me. Yep, at age 55, I am learning to speak Rooskie. Rock on!

Eddie Izzard (the executive transvestite comedian) explained U.S. white people’s thoughts about language this way: “Two languages in one head?! How can anyone live at that speed?” For the most part, that seems true to white folks. They act like anyone who can speak more than one language has some sort of magical gift that they must have sold their soul to the devil for.

No wonder they want their kids to be bilingual. I mean, another thing white people love is for their kids to be incredibly special and unique.

Galoisien: India has MASSIVE sewer problems. I’ll let you tell me how many hundreds of millions don’t haverunning water Care to be honest and get back to us on that?

Singapore is advanced because of its contact with Whites (British).

A Hindu is less White then me, believe me I have to live around them. I also have two working eyes. Nice try though.

I know what your angling at, but it’s beyond the scope here. It’s like arguing that Vijay Singh is a negro because his skin is darker than most negros. I know he isn’t, but still Hindus and the rest of India is most definitely not White.

You are hilarious. And self-righteous, like most right wing Christian fundamentalists. I hope I can speak for most Americans on this thread that your repetitive diatribe was exhausting to read and really funny. I don’t give a rat’s ass that you can calculate water forces in pipes. Big deal. Your crap is still brown. Calculate that.
And screaming “kafir” doesn’t make you cool or any more knowledgeable than the next person.

However, the great thing about America is that you are allowed to post your humorous treatise with no fear of retribution or jail or whatever, so welcome to the land of the First Amendment.

galoisien wishes he was white and american. have fun at uni… hope you can also calculate the force of a foot striking your ass for being so annoying. just kidding, but seriously man it sounds like you need better outlets than this blog. not much shaking in singapore??

“I hope the readers of your blog will think next time they say: “Black people……” “Hispanic people……” “Muslims (who are actually considered white by federal law)……” “Asian people…..”

I never heard people referred to, or identified by their race until I worked on a computer help desk with a Korean, black/Puerto Rican, Mexican, and two blacks all in their twenties or early thirties. It was all they ever talked about. It was weird because as a middle aged white liberal I had been schooled against those sort of generalizations all my life. I have never once heard a white person say out loud all the hateful things all other racial groups claim we say and think, and I will just bet you that none of these so called people of color have either. It is an urban myth that all white people hate everyone else, if that was the case why do we marry, adopt and sponsor so many of them at home and overseas?

Someone dissing you using ethnic slurs? Than he/she are probably the same ethnic group you are.

As interesting as your blog is, I think a more accurate title for it would be “things yuppies like”… I know far too many non-white upper-middle class software engineers and lawyers from Silicon Valley that fit these articles perfectly. Just visit UC Berkeley… the place is swarming with sheltered little Beamer-driving Asian American kids that fall under just about every article you’ve ever written here. You know why? It’s because they have money… they grew up as the majority in their respective hometowns, and they never faced any trials and tribulations beyond strict parents. Hell, I’d take strict grade-pressuring parents any day over the shit I grew up with.

Likewise, I grew up with plenty of blue collar white folks who couldn’t tell you what the Dave Chapelle show was because they were working so hard they had neither the time nor the interest in watching tv. When you have money and time on your hands, you can afford to spend your afternoons protesting, shopping at Whole Foods, and convincing yourself that recycling is the key to saving our world.

And when ya don’t have money, and your primary focus is staying alive, you could care less if someone uses organic makeup and recycles their plastics.

I’m sure you’re just as big of a yuppie as all these “white people” you write about. I mean shit, does my mama’s neighbor in la barria even know what wordpress is, let alone have 5 hours a day to dedicate to writing a blog about stereotypes? No, she’s busy scrubbing toilets.

Sometimes, you would have to learn more than one language due to the situation you find yourselves in – I know four languages – Tamil, Telugu, Hindi and English. All four had to be learnt by me due to certain geographical compulsions. But there is one language I would love to learn – German. Believe me, it is not easy to learn another language even if you were already not a mono-lingual and even if there is a lot of resources around you (like max muller institutes and internet). Can we master a language only if we are around people who speak that language (Like going to Germany) ?

Oh one more thing… I know way more Chinese Americans who are obsessed with Japanese culture than I do white people. They all want to go there for the JET program because they are obsessed with anime and jpop. The only reason you notice white people interested in that is because they stand out more. Like I said before… go to UC Berkeley, it’s swarming with Asian Americans that fit your yuppie stereotypes.

Is this really true about white people? I must be living in the wrong part of town. I know a lot of whites like myself but no one like you describe above. Guess we fall into the wrong income bracket.

I have laughed so hard at other entries! Really funny! (Me, I drink out of stainless steel canteens! I recycle, religiously! I rarely cut a rug at concerts! So funny, so true!) Nevertheless, I can tell this is gonna get old fast–it’d be good to let it rest before you’re way off course. Quit while you’re ahead!

“if that was the case why do we marry, adopt and sponsor so many of them at home and overseas?”

You say that like you are PROUD of it. what the hell is wrong with you?

What you have described is a sickness, and you have listed the symptoms. The underlying sickness of duped Whites (post-1965) will be studied by our white grandchildren as the biggest disgrace in Western history They won’t be pleased with the Brazil-like world we will force upon them.

Whites that create a non-White society for themselves and their progeny, are guilty of killing off the genes of the West — killing of genes is known as genocide. Say no to it. Wake up. Maybe someone later on won’t curse the stupid Whites of this period.

“It was weird because as a middle aged white liberal I had been schooled against those sort of generalizations all my life.”

Try turning off the jewtube and pick up a history book. Funny how jews in academia and media preach liberalism for Whites in the US, but are racist right-wing nationalists about Israel and their own tribe and families.

Sr. Clander…..you are a cultural genius in my book. Poignant , insightful, sumwhat cynical, but massive hilarity. You also walk a very fine line which i respect. Of course i’d expect the backlash of “dummy” racism from white devils who Don’t follow the acute reflection of prog/liberal whites AND the over-intellectualizing / over-analyzing from the white saviors who do get it. but all in all……shoutouts from my camp….

Joseph Caspar Mezzofanti (1774-1849) was an Italian Cardinal who spoke more than 38 languages fluently. He never left Italy and yet managed to learn how to speak languages without accent. People from all over the world came to challenge him in their native tongue. They all reported their amazement at this man’s fluency.

The life of Mezzofanti is of considerable interest to language enthusiasts.

The definitive study of Mezzofanti is a 500 pages book by Charles William Russel published in 1863. You will find the entire text of this book on this website.

[i] White people believe that if they had been given French language instruction when they were younger, their lives would have turned out very differently. Instead of living in the US, they would be living and working abroad for the United Nations or some other organization with a headquarters in Switzerland or The Hague. [/i]

uhm, people in the hague speak dutch, not french..
and dutch people are much more likely to be able to speak english than french.

“Galoisien: India has MASSIVE sewer problems. I’ll let you tell me how many hundreds of millions don’t haverunning water Care to be honest and get back to us on that?

Singapore is advanced because of its contact with Whites (British).”

The first is due to overcrowding, not the lack of infrastructure. Well actually it is due to the lack of infrastructure (the way to increase carrying capacity), but the infrastructure exists — it just can’t support enough people.

Whereas in Africa it’s like there isn’t even an infrastructure. But it only became independent in 1947. KESKE TU PENSES?!

Singapore is advanced because it LIES IN THE MIDDLE OF TRADE ROUTES. Like being between China and Arabia and India, as well as the US and being one of the ports you stop at after the Suez Canal.

Also Singapore is what it is because of its CONTACT WITH JEWS. That’s right, after the Six Day War in 1967, Lee Kuan Yew rang them up and said, “Yo! The British are withdrawing their army in four years and we need protection! Care to train our armed forces?” And thus our national service was born. After all, Israel is also another small but militarily powerful state.

(My point is, Singapore is what it is because it is a port and relies on trade and exchange by its very nature …. naturally contact with whites is part of this.)

“not much shaking in singapore??”

Not much shaking in Maine, that’s what. Chuis TCK entk. American PR counts as American, considering I first came here at the age of 5. Then I went back to my home country. And returned. And…

“You are hilarious. And self-righteous, like most right wing Christian fundamentalists. I hope I can speak for most Americans on this thread that your repetitive diatribe was exhausting to read and really funny.”

That’s curious, for I was only being half-serious (read: mocking bigotry is so fun…)

If you want to really know my true position, I don’t dislike Americans per se, but I know to expect cultural myopia in most Americans. Rationally, one can argue that this is not so much inherent to being American as being part of hegemony — for example, if Israelis suddenly became the dominant force on Earth I bet a lot of them would become complacent.

But prithee anyway, “like most Christian fundamentalists” is funny because though I see myself as a fundamentalist (e.g. the church has to be saved from diluting practices of ‘believe whatever you want and come to church only to hang out with friends’), I only explicitly went along that route once in my post. I am sympathetic to Muslims because I see many of them as pious. And plus their food just tastes great.

“A Hindu is less White then me, believe me I have to live around them. I also have two working eyes. Nice try though.

I know what your angling at, but it’s beyond the scope here. It’s like arguing that Vijay Singh is a negro because his skin is darker than most negros. I know he isn’t, but still Hindus and the rest of India is most definitely not White.”

Oh yes, please do a post on saying your from the (insert nearest cool city) instead of the dumpy or posh little suburb. Even in elementary school, we whiteys were self-conscious about our precious little suburban roots, and took great pains to indicate that our house was actually closer to the “wrong side of the tracks” than it was to the rich area.

Which brings me to another idea for a post. White people like pretending to be poor. And bragging about that summer job we had in the food service industry to show how much we have in common with “the common man,” how we’ve paid our dues, we’ve had to work our way up, nosiree, we weren’t born with silver spoons. We then acknowledge our privilege in passing, because not to do so would be ridiculous (we got schooled on that in the 80s), but always add a “but…” As in, “I mean, I know I had it pretty good growing up compared to a lot of people, but…”

This topic could tie into “slumming,” though that may deserve its own post, too….

awesome and true, the post is true and i have been the envy of peers and thier parents my entire life
…i speak english (australian) and french cos that’s where my family is from, and japanese now cos i have been living here for a year and a bit, plus of course i can read italian and some spanish cos they are practically the same with slightly different accents…It’s true that it can get you laid…but not by the people you want…and the worst thing is its gonna be awful to try and get my kids speaking three languages from the onset…

My mother was born and raised in Cuba. She never spoke spanish when we were growing up. It was very uncool to be ethnic back then. I’ve always had a smoldering regret that she didn’t teach us spanish (I’d be able to impress our lawn guys). I took 4 years of Intro French in high school and college and still can’t read a french menu. I don’t know why i think the spanish woulda stuck either?

I want to second the above poster who comments on inquiries about your weekend, or just general personal questions. I had to play 3 people in my office off from questions about my fucking weekend. Smoking weed, watching reruns and being a blob of uselessness wouldn’t have been sufficiently proactive of me. Even better: What did you do after work last night? Response: umm, you know, this and that. None of my black bosses (they’ve all been either white or black) ever bother me with these invasive questions, as if I have to be studying to be bored at the office when I’m on my own time.

I’m white and I’m encouraging my kids to learn spanish. Because it will be a usefull tool for communication and in the job market because America is so culturally diverse. Truthfully if there were a website like this where white people posted comments about stuff black people like, like Fried Chicken and Watermelon there would be an uproar. So is this equal rights at it’s best or a double standard?

Since you are covering the traits of the stereotypical white person (educated, trendy, hipster), as opposed to other sorts of stereotypical white people (frat boy, trailer trash, etc…) how about a few good traits to balance it out a little here?

White people don’t like to beat their wife
White people don’t mind gays
White people like to spend time with their kids
White people like to wash their hands after using the toilet
White people like to keep their house clean

I am a black man and this site was sent to me by a good friend and wife (white) for humor. I think she thinks it is humor for a lot of Americans to be hung up on the quirks of race, when we have more pressing issues.

We, blacks like self-deprecating humor as anyone else (Pryor, Lawrence, Rock, etc.), however, I just caution that you mind the demographic that you want to target. I mean, they are a lot of extremists, racist, radicals, that are looking for any type of justification for their own thoughts.

I see your blog has already attracted some of them. Just a word of caution.

By the way, I don’t know your background but I agree with a post that stated, these are observations of upper income white people.

I just got out of the military where I have worked with all kinds of races, nationalities in all kinds of scenarios and I can tell you that no one race holds a monopoly on any traits listed in your articles.

You nailed that one. There was a commercial for a car years ago where a portly (read FAT) guy with nice car said “Im more europeanish” yeah he was white. Americans are into class-jumping; nobody wants to be what they 99.5% are- working for a rich white guy. Ok well once I worked for a rich white gal. I never met a european that was sexually frustrated- I guess they exist but seems like most get all they want- prolly from monolingual ‘mericans. Nuff said

It might have been mentioned already. It’s status thing to have multi-lingual children. These are the same people who insist that English be spoken at all times and be the primary language of America. I think English is and should be the primary language of this country, however there should be opportunities for multi-lingual white children to speak to other children from other parts of the world without having to get on a plane to do it.

White people love this blog because it allows them to feel independent from white culture. Despite these attempts at seeming unique, white people are conditioned and predisposed to enjoying everything mentioned here. If you are a white person and read this blog, it does not mean that you do not like the things mentioned here.

White people particularly enjoy sharing this website with their friends in an effort to demonstrate their cynical wit and awareness of white culture. If you are a white person, you will most likely put a link to this blog in one (or all) of your many web profiles, share this through IM, and e-mail it to all your white friends.

Yeah, fuck whitey dude. What the fuck have white people ever done for the world but start fucking wars and shit. They need to be categorized into a little box and then thrown the fuck overboard so the brown people of the world can get back to fucking civilized pursuits.

Actuallt, German was the language that I first wanted to learn. After trying quite hard I have learned that my knack for languages is below averagre compared to by peers.
Ideally if I perfected German then French would be my next language (which I know bits of) and then something more obscure like Maylay.
I did learn enough French before visiting France to communicate reasonably well if I could ocassionally look up words in my lonely planet phrase book.

as a second generation, i grew up speaking fluent korean – until i started going to school. then i lost most of it, trying to fit in. i see it still happening to current immigrant families where i commonly hear a parent talking to their kid in korean, then the kid responding in english. i agree with whomever stated there needs to be a critical mass to keep the language up, otherwise the kids of immigrants get fed the melting pot bullshit, lose so much of their culture and become whitewashed.

white people want to sample other cultures but never really fully understand the experience of being from another culture because they buy into the idea of being “white”. then they claim they have no culture, which is untrue – just look at this blog! In some ways, i feel bad for white people because they don’t know what they’ve sacrificed for their white privilege. on the other hand, i feel worse for black people who had their culture raped away by white people, know what they’re missing (to varying degrees), get shoved down the totem pole and then are told it’s their fault they’re down there. or worse, that there’s no racism and white people are colorblind, which is even more racist.

and don’t forget political white kids who are bike riding, vegetarian, organic food loving, metal water bottle toting “activists” who study abroad and know what ‘s best for poor people. they get to go to mexico on daddy’s dime to learn spanish in chiapas – straight from the source! they’re so white, they don’t even realise it.

I’m white and I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!! I think all Cheeseburgers should be outlawed. The carbon footprint from our consumption of Cheeseburgers exceeds our carbon footprint from all the driving we do. This has to stop. Take a look at the following video. We’re doomed.

It should also be noted that the supreme achievement in multilingual child-rearing involves adopting an Mandarin Chinese child, and then teaching it French. For white people, this is like the Triple Crown of parenting.

As a child I was educated in a school where french was spoken and taught. Though I understand a lot of what I hear, I cannot speak it with any expertise. Now, I am trying to lean ebonics and am find it challenging.

I think the claim about Spanish here is one of first truly radically inaccurate statements made here. I grew up in an overwhelmingly white town, and Spanish was by far the most popular foreign language class in high school, and I get the impression that that is true almost everywhere. Now I know “white people” on this site means “upper class white liberal snobs” rather than all white people, and it is true that people of that type do have some affinity for studying French, but I think that many of their children take Spanish as well.

crazy. i live on the west coast and everyone I know wants to learn Spanish and there are plenty of Spanish immersion programs and preschools to prove it. it’s hard to believe there are people who don’t want their kids to speak Spanish simply because “brown people speak it”. I’d much rather my kids learn Spanish because it will be useful to them, as opposed to a European language that nobody speaks around here.

And to whoever was looking for the positive things about white people.. spend time with their kids? are you serious? I’m a temp nanny and I babysit almost exclusively for rich white people who had children as a status quo bit, and have pawned them off on other people to raise them. the LAST thing they want to do is spend time with their kids. They’ll fundraise for schools, they’ll get their nails done. They’ll go to lunch with Grammy, they’ll work ridiculous hours, they’ll go on vacations without their kids. They don’t want to spend time with their kids, they want kids for cute holiday cards.

You’re white? Really? I never would have guessed….cuz…Jodie’s such an exotic name, and all.

It’s not your America anymore, Jodie (in fact, it never was, unless you are a member of the Oligarchy, which of course you’re not). The Chinese own us, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, so as the poster mentioned above, you better learn Mandarin, and fast, so you can get in good graces with the new owners.

I’m arab, and really thankful for that. That way I don’t get chastised just for being a certain way. It’s currently the in thing within white people groups to be hyper-politically correct towards arabs. It wasn’t always that way though!

You guys do realize though that, white people can’t change the color of their skin, and whatever they end up doing, that will be “what white people do.” That seems pretty racist to me.

White people hate being white, but white people also hate white people who hate being white. So, it seems pretty lose-lose.

Again, I’m really thankful I’m not caught in that racial guilt loop. Instead I get to be paid less than the average white person? Is there any “correct” race to be? Is that the same as being a member of the successful race?

I am super-white! I had a double major in Latin and Fine Arts PLUS I am getting an MA in Humanities. (I am actually a working artist, though.) I’ve lived in Japan, been to Norway and studied Norwegian (basically Swedish), married to a “mixed” person, and I whine all the time about not speaking French. In fact, I have an ad for French classes sitting right next to my computer. I love jazz, listen to NPR, and shop at the organic market. (Hell, I run http://www.eatlocalfrederick.com!) The only catch is that I am conservative, albeit a “Crunchy Conservative!”

Even though it is completely off of the subject; I would love to reduce our bloated military budget and put it into the health and education sciences. Stop electing officials who continue this trend of half a trillion dollar military budgets.

On subject, I am not sure what notion you feel is “absurd”. However, i do hear you when say that I have not right to a word of caution.

Yes, your observations are funny. But most of them do not apply to white people in the uk, where A LOT of poor whites are not educated at all and can’t even speak english properly, never mind another language.
I think you should change your blog name to MIDDLE CLASS white people and then it would be spot on.
Hopefully soon we’ll all get over the race thing and try and improve our imaginations and expectations of ‘other’ humans. But by then the machines will have taken over.
Yes I’m white, no one likes us and we don’t care…

In fact, f that, I’m sick of all this race isht. BORING! If you don’t take people at face value, as individuals, we as humans will never progress. Blacks do wrong, whites do wrong, Asians do wrong, all our governments are corrupt, people are stupid, people are clever, stupid people are clever, people work, people are selfish, we are the world, we are the children, we are the ones who sit on our arses writing wrongs on message boards, which doesn’t really get us anywhere, we like what we are used to, we like what’s different, everybody’s racist, everybody hurts, sometimes (lol)…
Oh yes, you forgot to include small talk, that a white staple.

Whatever! And what do you mean anyway? I was just stating a FACT, which is that a large amount of POOR, UN-EDUCATED, WHITE people, are quite difficult to understand here in the UK, due to youth slang, skunk weed and a leaning towards ignorance. I thought it was worth mentioning as an alternative view on the whole ‘whitey loves being bi-lingual’ thing.
I think you are too quick to brand people ‘trolls’ too, so I suggest you can take your ‘variants on english’ book and shove it snobby trousers.

“so I suggest you can take your ‘variants on english’ book and shove it snobby trousers.”

It’s not my book — it’s a bloody range of works. In fact, the whole area is so expansive and YOU refuse to recognise it.

I don’t know who’s more ignorant. If you google William Labov, his name comes up as a DEFINITION. (“American linguist who greatly advanced the study of sociolinguistics with his text The Social Stratification of English in New York City (1966).”)

Firstly you need to differentiate between correlation and cause. That there is a difference between correlation for a certain race with certain elements (crime rate, test scores, preferences, etc.) does not at all entail that race is the cause of those elements (one of the key tenets of statistics). Yet you seem to subscribe otherwise. Who is more uneducated?

“I was just stating a FACT, which is that a large amount of POOR, UN-EDUCATED, WHITE people, are quite difficult to understand here in the UK, due to youth slang, skunk weed and a leaning towards ignorance. I thought it was worth mentioning as an alternative view on the whole ‘whitey loves being bi-lingual’ thing.”

No, you were stating your IMPRESSION. Quite different!

And here is your bigotry!

Who said they necessarily wanted to be understood by the likes of bigots like you? That is why they keep a code.

Firstly you should realise that historically even in England, excluding Wales, Scotland, etc. there has always been a sharp phonetic distinction between the speech of between different areas. Yet you treat the UK homogeneously and make no mention of this fact — which seems to imply that you’re only posing to be a UK resident (or just a very ignorant one).

Furthermore, if you think that weed and slang contributes to the decline of language, then you should realise that slang has always been present in language SINCE THE DAWN OF BLOODY HUMAN HISTORY. If not for slang, French and Spanish wouldn’t exist (it would have stayed Latin).

Secondly, because there is a correlation between THC and lower intelligence does not mean that THC is the cause of that lower intelligence, and I would argue that the THC in cannabis has mostly short-term effects.

“snobby trousers.”

Ultimate irony — I am only being snobby back as a retaliation for your being snobby, infidel. Don’t tell people to take sawdust out of their eyes when you have a plank in yours.

I am so totally cracking up reading this blog. I am a white average middleaged mom, who knows a little german a little spanish a little japanese but none enough to even travel to that other country…LOL. And the water post is hillarious as well. Actually your whole site is very funny. We are an amazingly complicated yet uncomplicated, stupidly smart culture that doesn’t know up from down most of the time. What is so great is that you, through this site, has made it okay to laugh at ourselves, poke fun at our weirdness and be fine with it all! Keep it up and I will keep reading!
L.G.

Hi, Galoisien, I just found out you’re all over the web, giving your opinions about everything. Do you have a day job? If so, please go back to it so we don’t have to scroll down to avoid your comebacks.
While you seem pretty knowledgeable about languages in general, you ruin all of it with name-calling and (again) self-righteous junk. No one cares about your sympathies with the Muslim world, and please stop using the sawdust/plank crap. It’s really old. You’re repeating yourself.
Otherwise you’re probably an ok person and have a good grasp of grammar and sentence structure. You’re pretty uppity though.

Heh, I’d laugh my ass off if you were really an uptight white guy or girl stuck to your computer in some basement in Notown USA and this is simply the way you get your kicks.

I am a dual-enrolled high school student. I am actually quite busy at this moment (because it is a pivotal semester), and am only afforded time due to the weekend. However, this is a good opportunity to note (and attack) hypocrisy and institutionalised prejudice that is kept hush-hush in public — to expose what people think even when they don’t normally say it, and it does finally draw attention to the elephant in the living room.

“It’s really old.”

As are the 400 different stereotypes in this thread.

“you ruin all of it with name-calling and (again) self-righteous junk. ”

Note that I name-call ONLY because others do. I have not been the one to cast the first stone — and I use epithets in response to those who use epithets in return.

For example, note that I only accuse others of ignorance when they make blanket statements about other people’s ignorance, and accuse others of bigotry when they have made blanket statements accusing others.

Somehow, it’s seen as more polite and less unjust when you are name-calling an entire group because you’re not talking directly to them — but when you are frank and truthful to a specific person, it is seen as “uppity” and “self-righteous”. Western values on what is polite during discourse are so interesting!

When people comment about the stupidity of the youth or some demographic in their country, does this not invite attacks on their own stupidity or their own demographic? Do answer this.

I am not at all invoking tu quoque — a lot of my epithet usage isn’t heartfelt — only as a rhetorical response to give “an eye for an eye” to those who use the same tactic.

“No one cares about your sympathies with the Muslim world, ”

Naturally. I did not expect anyone to even mention it — but blame the bigot who insulted Islam in this thread. It is because of him that I thereby responded. Why aren’t you attacking him?

Why do you criticise me for using epithets against the epithet users, and not the real epithet-users themselves? Or do you sympathise with them?

My white young cousins go to a bilingual Spanish school and I’m extremely jealous…and I know plenty of asian kids who do a lot of the stuff on your list more than most of my white friends…including learning French…but i guess Stuff A Lot Of Well-Off Americans Who Went To College Like doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.

“I have to agree that I tire of galoisien’s lack of respect for others. Also for having such great grammer you (galoisien) keep spelling realize incorrect…it is not realise… FYI!”

No, it’s realise car c’est l’orthographe en Angleterre.

And because I’m Singaporean as well as American. Singapore’s a Commonwealth country. You know, the country which became independent from Britain in 1963, and from Malaysia in 1965.

I will not be the one to harp on Americans for spelling “colour” as “color” — but “realise” is not incorrect, but a variant spelling. Now, perhaps you may wish to ask, “What’s the difference between a variant and an error?”

(One definition is that a variant has a new innovation [concept] that has since spread to a community; whereas a error, common or not doesn’t really have any concept behind it.)

“I have to agree that I tire of galoisien’s lack of respect for others. ”

And yet you do not tire of the other infidels’ lack of respect for rationality, common sense and yes, other groups?

I am disrespectful to those who show disrespect, and those who cast the first stone. Those who I attacked — gave up their right not to be by having themselves attacked others.

Please, I beg of you, do an entry on board games. This is a must as I live in a college town where board games are a primary source of entertainment and social bonding. To suggest other forms of entertainment here is to label yourself a social leper. This is sure fire “white.”

The rules are simple:

1. If you can, play said board game, let’s say scrabble, in a public place. Often a local hipster/hippie cafe will have communal board games so you can demonstrate not only how hip you are, but how large a vocabulary you possess.

2. Get competitive, but not too competitive. Your enthusiasm should resemble that of a spelling B competitor as opposed to an athlete.

3. To master the art of board gaming. make as many sexual innuendos and jokes as possible. Your white college friends like being reminded that they are “adults” and sexual promiscuity part of the college “experience.”

America
1507, in Cartographer Martin Waldseemüller’s treatise “Cosmographiae Introductio,” from Mod.L. Americanus, after Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512) who made two trips to the New World as a navigator and claimed to have discovered it. His published works put forward the idea that it was a new continent, and he was first to call it Novus Mundus “New World.” Amerigo is more easily Latinized than Vespucci. The name Amerigo is Gmc., said to derive from Goth. Amalrich, lit. “work-ruler.” The O.E. form of the name has come down as surnames Emmerich, Emery, etc. It. fem. form merged into Amelia. Amerika “U.S. society viewed as racist, fascist, oppressive, etc.” first attested 1969; the spelling is Ger., but may also suggest the KKK.

Yes definitely French as most desirous second language, however knowledge in Latin is also a must–I mean who else can translate the random phrases on crests and school facades better than white people?…Spanish is an extremely low-brow language for white people to know since the only jobs available for the knowledge of it are limited to social services and such. German and other Northern Euro languages should only be learned if you have some cultural ties to it. Some white people even love learning obscure languages only white people know such as Welsh and Gaelic.

Italian is a fun language to know, especially when white people wish to cite their favorite restaurant in Rome…but it CANNOT be their only second language

You guys should check out the stuff white people dont like site. Its just as funny and I think it just started because there arent that many postings. i think the address is stuffwhitepeopledontlike.blogspot.com

Ha ha, Galoisien, I am really laughing now. It turns out that you’re a high school student trying to make himself into something he isn’t. No wonder you have such a hilariously bratty outlook!

How typical that you have formed such solid, immovable opinions at your age. You haven’t even lived yet, dude.
Go out and get some real life experience and then come back and try blogging again.

You’re probably sitting at your computer copying out of books anyway. I think that might be called plagiarism. Just a tip: if you were in college right now, your professors would be on your case for not citing your sources.

It sounds to me that what you really need is a good ass-kicking, preferably by your parents.

Actually you would be wrong, that isn’t plagiarism, it’s just copying facts out of books. Synthesizing information from texts is what we in America commonly call learning. Had this person copied someone’s idea and pawned them off as his own, then it would be plagiarism, but the time line of American discovery isn’t really up for debate, therefore it isn’t.

I don’t agree with his previous statements, but the truth is the truth, no?

I am White, and can speak Korean and Chinese fairly fluently. I understand why White people may want to learn languages in which they might, some day, be able to pass themselves off as a local. That is one of the unstated aims of language learning. No matter how well I speak Korean or Chinese, I have great difficulty passing myself off as a local.

Anyway, I don’t see the problem with French. Doesn’t half of Africa speak French? But I do see the point: here in the UK, Urdu is a commonly spoken language, but I don’t see any schools teaching it.

As to this blog in general, this is just middle-class American stuff, I think its got very little to do with race. It is very insightful, though, and a lot of stuff here is the same stuff that annoys me about Americans in general. The problem is basically having too much money.

Hey Mike, thanks for your thoughtful reply; however, this kid is spouting way too much material not to be reading and then citing at least some of it. How do you know he’s not passing it off as his own if he doesn’t cite it? Copying facts out of books, writing them down for others to see and not citing them IS plagiarism, according to most colleges. They’re really sticklers for making sure students don’t inadvertently plagiarize.
A person certainly could be guilty of plagiarism by accident.
I just took a little class on this and even I was surprised at how easy it would be to plagiarize a work unintentionally.

By the way, I wish I could speak a lot of languages. I would love to be able to speak:

Hawaiian (Really quite a pretty language)
Japanese
German
French
Chinese
Vietnames
Irish
…and better Spanish. Right now I can only curse in Spanish and speak enough to stay out of trouble. You know,
“Donde esta el bano”, stuff like that.

We do have to take foreign language class in school, but yes, if you never use it, you’ll never be able to use it well. I learned Japanese, because I love anime/manga and other Japanese related stuff. But after 4-5 years, and lost contact with my Japanese friends, my Japanese is pretty much zero again.

I agree with you that I kinda blamed my parents for not talking in other language when I was small. Hahaha.

Your white kids are gonna know how to speak Spanish as an after thought if they are an American. My nephew is 1 and he loves that Nick Jr. show “Go, Diego, Go!” and Diego is constantly saying “excellente!” and all kinds of crap. So, I’m pretty sure he’s gonna sabe espanol cuando es vieja.

i learnt espanol in hi-skool, and practiced mostly when i moved to florid@, then montreal and learnded basic french. in 2 months….but it’s easy because of the close connection to english y el poquito del vocabulario que yo no olvido, tambien= aussi especialment par-ce que tout le monde ici (montreal) parlons cette langue.

also, another word of advice, (sincerely) befriending someone who doesn’t share a fluent language w/ you is one way to learn another language if you have an intention to do thus. It’s free, and both of you benefit from each other’s respective language.. It doesn’t necessarily have to be practical in a social sense. For example, Aramaic, Hebrew & especially ARABIC is 1 way of gaining spiritual insight through al-furqan min deen, insha-@LL@H, ya~aneeh?, and knowing Chinese could be advantageous for matters of international trade (though your intentions should be checked against the ethics of New World Capitalism and the oppresive nature of Free Trade) but aside from that, bah-dui, bah-dui, gonzhuo bu mahu, shi ma?

* minute message from another Coloured person who happens to be a Linguist. At least Amerikkka gets one point for me being a minority percentage of multilingual passport holding Americans who didn’t go to college, who actually is Poor (possibly because of the lack of white privileges and resources ), yet has risen to the proverbial heights of a World Citizen while defying the Apocalyptic, Elitist, Neo-con$ & the Spineless but seemingly well-meaning Liberals. Politics in my Country of origin is Very Banal as you may know by now (but also, politics in many other countries leave much to be desired), but WE ALL MUST VOTE FOR OBAMA. This will mean so much to the WHOLE WORLD. The people of America (especially my White American Neighbors & Friends) may not realize how the people of the WHOLE WORLD support Obama with Us. C’mon, Bu$h Co. went 2 terms without impeachment at the behest of the entire world. OUR TROOPS ARE STATIONED IN OVER 150 COUNTRIES WORLDWIDE. IF THOSE SLIGHTLY IF NOT OVERTLY (IRAQ & AFGHANISTAN) OCCUPIED COUNTRIES COULD VOTE, THEY WOULD ALL VOTE Obama. Middle America & the Powers that be, you could atleast throw us a bone with Obama. He’s probably 1 of the behind-the-scenes (elite) conspirators but atleast we can imagine that he wouldn’t try to sell the USA on a Boogeyman rationale of doing business as usual vis-a-vis the highly profitable military-industrial war complex and it’s a great message to our children about what can be accomplished in the land they will be inheriting that has so much racial exclusion to this day.

-The type of privileged liberal caricatures mentioned on this site are insightful but upon reflection, this should all be taken lightly and in good spirit as it is satirical, firstly, & analysis,secondly.

– also, WHite people make the claim that This is Racist. (stop being so whiny & sensitive, you are making Normal European Americans look bad; which may be in the minority) Colored people aren’t in a PRIVILEGED POSITION TO BE RACIST. RACISM IS SYSTEMATIC AND ONLY WHITE PEOPLE HAVE THE POSITIONING TO INTERWEAVE IT WITHIN A SYSTEM. A BLACK PERSON CAN BE PREJUDICED AGAINST WHITE PEOPLE ALL DAY BUT CAN NEVER BE RACIST. That’s hard to swallow. C’mon, white people never have to worry about how their race will be perceived if they are being pulled over by the cops. Black ppl receive harsher sentencing w/in the justice system. The War on Drugs is a War on Blacks & Browns, The War on Terrorism is a War on Arabs. All of it has a basis of Racism. From Racial Profiling at borders/airports to Affirmative Action (which has FACTUALLY mostly helped white womyn in the American Job Force), there is no other systematic counterpart of this degree of Racism from the Black or Brown Communities. Explain to me again how Native Americans are being Racist towards whites these days?

The TRUTH HURTS, But it can ALSO HEAL. MAKE HISTORY BY VOTING IN THE FIRST US COLORED PRESIDENT. All in all he’s probably a Decent politician on the surface and he says things which he can be held accountable for. He says he is going to directly reduce the influence of multi-nationals / lobby groups in politics who are the true custodians of this system…. Wouldn’t you like to say to your future multilingual AZN-white mixed grandchildren that you Voted in the First Black / Colored President in the USA? Think about your future posterity……

I must say this would make more sense for me if my boyfriend wasn’t French!! Otherwise, I’d know exactly why he’s dating me….so what does that say about white French people…do their parents all want them to speak English?

“I am disrespectful to those who show disrespect, and those who cast the first stone. Those who I attacked — gave up their right not to be by having themselves attacked others.”

I did not attack ANYONE in my first post. Just thought I’d post a little light hearted comment and lo, some university smart arse with NOTHING BETTER TO DO started to call me a troll. Hypocrite!
Why don’t you write a book on ‘totally missing the point and calling people names ’cause I’m really clever and I read books’

“When people comment about the stupidity of the youth or some demographic in their country, does this not invite attacks on their own stupidity or their own demographic? Do answer this.”

Answer: When a person from england tries to tell you something about their country, you listen. You do not then call that person an ‘infidel’ and tell them they are wrong and you are right because you’ve read a book about it.
You’ve probably never been to england, let alone an impoverished council estate. I HAVE. It’s not my ‘impression’, I LIVE HERE DOOFUS!
It’s you who’s ignorant, just blazing away in a tidal wave of your own shitty self righteousness…

Infidel, kufar are REALLY hateful names to call people, you obviously have some issues if you feel the need to poison this supposedly ‘fun’ blog with YOUR bigotry to people who are not as clever/fortunate enough to be university educated like you.

‘Cos there’s always someone there, with a big nose, who knows, who’ll trip you up and laugh when you fall’- Morrissey

“You’re probably sitting at your computer copying out of books anyway. I think that might be called plagiarism. Just a tip: if you were in college right now, your professors would be on your case for not citing your sources.”

Remembering what you read (e.g. forming a conceptual framework) and copying without source.

I am not writing a research paper. For example, if you’re asked to give theory for the extinction of the trilobites over an AP exam, you’re not asked to source the information (although they might ask for names of scientists who created the theory).

Note you infidels, where I actually COPIED AND PASTED AD VERTABIM, I cited my source, I gave a link. And you fault me for this? Now, you Westerners are truly blind. Why do you only accuse me of mongering hate, when I back up my accusations with reason, and why do you refuse to attack the other hate-mongerers then? Is it that you cannot accept the truth that really matters?

“How typical that you have formed such solid, immovable opinions at your age.”

They’re not solid, and they’re far from immovable.

I’ve changed stances whenever I’ve been giving an argument that actually is well-constructed. My stance on plea-bargaining made U-turn after I debated it at States, for example.

However, herein lies YOUR prejudice. It’s amazingly uncanny: you ASSUME from my age that my opinions are immovable, you assume that from my youth that I will have certain behaviours without seeing it evidenced from me.

That my friends, is prejudice and hate. That is irrationality — you are the true hate-mongerer.

Also, since I am not writing a research paper — why don’t you SOURCE YOUR IDEA Tthat people in your country are ignorant, huh?

Why do I attack you, kat? It is because you have this PREJUDICE against youths. That is hate in itself. You have some sort of hate campaign to conduct against our generation, and here I retaliate with a hate campaign against you.

If I did not tell you my age (it’s funny how you asked if I had a job), you would have had no attacks in that direction.

Obviously, if a person’s 17, anything he cites must obviously have been copied out of somewhere, right, and because he is unable to synthesise arguments competently?

You infidels are bigots and hate-mongerers, not I.

“Infidel, kufar are REALLY hateful names to call people,”

Kafir — haha, but I bet you didn’t know it before you were forced to look it up.

They’re not particularly hateful names — in my online culture we call each other infidels as playful insults. It’s a meme thing. But maybe you adults are out of the trend. (For example, it’s just like it’s not hateful to call someone your nigga in a rap song to mean your “homie”, etc.)

I did not mean to enter into a generational conflict — but if this is what you want, then so be it.

Tell me, how am I poisoning this “fun” blog? This blog is far from fun — it is satire; this is like calling Animal Farm a “fun” book because it has talking animals in it. For example, the Onion may be really funny, but it is also giving very serious messages which do need to be discussed.

I am not the one to poison this blog when others have done it before me — I am only attacking those others.

“I just took a little class on this and even I was surprised at how easy it would be to plagiarize a work unintentionally.”

LOL kat took a class and now he feels all superior and feels the need to point it out to everybody!

Perhaps you don’t realise the culture of internet debating: you can cite FACTS (as opposed to arguments) freely without a source because you assume that they are well-known and won’t be contested.

When someone says, “wait a minute, could you cite this, I don’t believe it, because I have this contradicting fact…” then you cite sources, because now your information is being contested.

Note that in Lincoln-Douglas debate for example, you cite sources for statistics, but you don’t have to source certain definitions unless they’re disputed in rebuttal or in cross-examination.

Dear kat, we are not writing a research paper here. I don’t think your class has even taught you when to cite and when not to cite — you don’t cite every so often you’ve written a long page of information that you’ve CONCEPTUALISED in your head.

Of course, according to the AGE BIGOT THAT IS YOU, 17-year-olds cannot conceptualise! Oh no! They can only memorise by rote, and copy stuff!

By being so hateful and so ignorant, I am perfectly justified in giving you as much vitriol as you deserve, and reflecting that hate back onto you. Eye for an eye.

“”‘Cos there’s always someone there, with a big nose, who knows, who’ll trip you up and laugh when you fall’- Morrissey”

On this matter I have nothing to fear from God, nothing to hide. I do not have an ulterior motive, I am not doing it for pride, only to purge the particularly insidious forms of bigotry and prejudice from culture.

“I did not attack ANYONE in my first post.”

What was your first post prithee? You anonymouses all look the same to me. (And that’s true!)

“Just thought I’d post a little light hearted comment and lo, some university smart arse with NOTHING BETTER TO DO started to call me a troll. Hypocrite!
Why don’t you write a book on ‘totally missing the point and calling people names ’cause I’m really clever and I read books’”

I am actually a Wikipedia sysop … and believe me, in order to enforce policy I have to constantly deal with issues of verifiability and citation.

How is it a light-hearted comment? When you say people in England “can’t even speak their own language properly,” I know exactly what bigoted position you are coming from. For example, if someone starts quoting Pat Robertson (who shall I say is not a true fundamentalist, and is only in the ministry for fame and power) as a formidable source, I know to instantly discredit those arguments.

When you say that people who have grown up in an anglophone culture (I assume you refer not to immigrants) do not know their own language, then that is a HATEFUL remark, based on the prejudiced idea that simply because you have people using variants of a language that those persons don’t know how to speak “proper” language.

Perhaps you didn’t know you were being bigoted. When you make some blanket remark about people and you get told you’re being ignorant, bigoted and offensive, don’t act all amazed like you don’t know you would be that way. A lot of racists don’t realise they’re being racist and act way too surprised when they’re called on their racism. Yours in particular wasn’t racist, but you were hatefully discriminating based on dialect.

“You’ve probably never been to england, let alone an impoverished council estate. I HAVE. It’s not my ‘impression’, I LIVE HERE DOOFUS!
It’s you who’s ignorant, just blazing away in a tidal wave of your own shitty self righteousness…”
Singapore was a British colony and gained independence in the 1960s. We suffered under British repression.

I know what it is like to live in public housing (over 80% of the population lives in public housing).

Also, living in a place does not automatically grant you the ability to be the ultimate authority of what’s happening in that place, because it’s still based on your BIASED perception. In order to draw meaningful conclusions we need OBJECTIVE quantifications — e.g. a proper study, and those studies HAVE been done. Those youths you speak of do not have worse faculties of language, though YOU may perceive it to be so.

This information isn’t even from books, but from conversations with other linguists.

It is precisely your impression because in your day-to-day interactions you have formed a PREJUDICE about what those people are like. That is precisely what an impression is! Thus your argument falls under anecdotal evidence — a very weak form of evidence indeed.

Unless you have something to CITE for your fact? Where’s your evidence?

Ah, unreasonable, you might say! But that’s because the evidence doesn’t exist! It’s based on you adults’ biased perception! Languages have always had slang, and if you’re telling me the standard of language has been declining since 100,000 BC I will be forced to give you a very strange look.

My calling you out is not based on reading some book — I have personal investment in this matter. In Singapore we speak a creole which is a GRAMMATICAL fusion of English, Hokkien, Teochew, Tamil, Malay, etc. and many other languages spoken in the region, but we’re told it is not “proper” English — even though sociolinguistics has vindicated it as a creole.

I know people like you, because in my homeland I was forced to deal with the very SAME TYPES who say that we were not speaking proper English every day. I dealt with the same type of bigotry. So unless you can tell me why your language bigotry is particularly distinctive from all the rest, I am not obligated to listen to your bigoted shit.

I don’t have to go to England to know this, especially since you Westerners have such an influence over the world anyway. I know the arguments from people of your type! I have an utter hatred of people like you.

“When a person from england tries to tell you something about their country, you listen. ”

When a KKK member tries to tell you something about the blacks in their South, you listen …

When Kim Jung-Il tries to tell you something about the impressive state of affairs and high standard of living in his country, you listen ….

When Ann Coulter tries to tell you something about the “liberals” in her state, you listen …

When a particularly vengeful Greek nationalist tries to tell you something about the Turks in his country, you listen …

Hopefully you realise why “I am from country X, therefore I am the foremost authority on country X” is flawed logic. Of course I will grant you some ethos for being from country X, but you are to back up your argument with facts. Of which you virtually provided none in your argument!

The fact that you don’t know but assume what sex I am amuses me. If you know anything about language like you claim, you will know that “Kat” is generally a shortened version of a woman’s name.

I have a 17-year-old child, I know how 17-year-olds view the world, and if you were my kid I’d have your ass for being so self-righteous. Believe me, I live with the “my parent is an idiot and I know everything” attitude daily from my daughter.

You are wrong about plagiarism, you are wrong about a lot of things, and at least I haven’t succumbed to actual name-calling where you are concerned. However being a child you indulge in name-calling and other childish behavior toward almost everyone on this blog. You are probably going to grow up to be an insufferable
person unless you change your attitude. This is really too bad as you are obviously an intelligent being. You’re just using your intelligence for all the wrong reasons.
You expect everyone to adhere to your mode of thought, and you haven’t even lived yet. If you are reachable, prove it. I haven’t seen you back down from one thing; the only thing you’re doing is trying to prove how “right” you are. Hahaha!

By the way, just because you lived in public housing doesn’t mean you’re an expert on anything, as you yourself said (Response #545, Galoisien).

In the past I’ve been poor and also lived in public housing, and it’s a daily struggle to keep yourself and your family together. You say that you are a “dual-enrolled high school student”. That means you probably don’t have time to work. Tell me, are you helping your parents pay the bills? If you are, good on you. Have you volunteered at a clinic or soup kitchen or homeless shelter? If not, you have no business preaching about poverty or hardship. On the other hand if you have lived in poverty, I applaud your persistence in gaining an education. Again, please use your knowledge not to impress others, but to help the world.

I am willing to bet that you haven’t cited every source you’ve used, research paper or not. And lots of people contribute to Wiki. Your contributions may be appreciated, but you seem to think that showing what knowledge YOU claim to have is going to make you better than everyone else. By the way, whatever you have sourced hasn’t been done in the proper form. Please do yourself a favor and research how to properly, in writing, cite your sources.
You’ll need it for college anyway.

Since you are a child I still have hope that you will outgrow yourself and become an actual useful human being. Please try to take a broader view of the world and stop assuming you know more than everyone else.
Go play with the other kids until you have some sense before I spank you. : )

No Kat can be shortened form of both male and female names; furthermore, I did not know if you were playing on “cat,” whether it was your last name, etc. So let us not fume over this area.

“I have a 17-year-old child, I know how 17-year-olds view the world, and if you were my kid I’d have your ass for being so self-righteous.”

I think that is irony. Obviously by your logic, by having *one* 17-year-old (from mainstream American culture) you can extend this to all 17-year-olds of the world. I am not inherently self-righteous — I simply spit back people’s arguments back at them; thus, if you are bigoted, my rebutting post will show bigotry against the original criminal; if a poster is self-righteous (along the lines of, “I speak proper English but the youth in the ‘hood refuse to!” like our dear anonymous friend) then I too, become self-righteous in order to show retaliate vitriol with vitriol. Some people are amazed, “Why so much hate?” But they do not realise how much hate they themselves incurred as well.

I have done plenty of introspection due to this blog. I have in fact changed positions on several race-related issues. Now, have you done a similar introspection? Are you capable of evaluating the mindset and the attitude you have?

What I find interesting is that you choose to attack me rather than the original criminals (such as the commenter with a hate diatribe against Islam, who I thoroughly corrected) — unless again you align yourself with those criminals rather than perhaps being acknowledge the truth where it hurts. You have refused to answer me on this point.

“You are wrong about plagiarism, you are wrong about a lot of things,”

Then attack me on specific points.

Please, do I have to cite Pokorny or William Jones every time I bring up Proto-Indo-European? Far from it.

The other thing is plagiarism versus verifiability versus copyright law. The issues for the three of them are very different. I am directly synthesising from the knowledge I have already conceptualised (stuff I learnt years ago), and items that have been reinforced time and time again (stuff we discuss in class). I could cite a source for anything I’ve said, IF YOU WANT TO DISPUTE A SPECIFIC POINT.

But you have made no specific arguments. You have not disputed any of my points and said, “wait a minute, aren’t you copying and pasting this from [X], or where is your source for this?”

Furthermore, this comment is not meant to be a rigourous intellectual work. I assure you if I were writing a formal paper my paragraphs would be littered with citations. I’ve synthesised so many points in this thread that if you actually had the instinct to read carefully, my arguments couldn’t possibly be plagiarised. Furthermore, I have the feeling that *you* are being self-righteous by seeking to impose the knowledge gained from your new class on everybody because you think, “Oh wait a minute! I can toss this in!” This was coupled with a most amazing bigotry when you doubted that I could know my facts cold, as opposed to copying them out from a book.

Have you formally debated, Kat? Then I trust you know the etiquette of citation in debate? (Though I must make an exception for Policy, because their constructives are ridiculously long and it is in fact rather like writing a research paper.)

“However being a child you indulge in name-calling and other childish behavior toward almost everyone on this blog. ”

Everyone in this thread is being childish. I respond like with like.

You only single me out because I actually synthesise those elements into a cohesive argument, and where it fails to agree with your worldview. Why aren’t you calling out everyone else in this thread? (Pfft, not everyone in this blog — do make a distinction between a single comment thread and an entire blog, kthxbai.)

“You expect everyone to adhere to your mode of thought, ”

You jump to conclusions on what I expect. I seek to single out insidious prejudice. I don’t expect anyone to adhere a to specific mode of thought (whatever that means — would you care to define that for us please, and CITE YOUR SOURCE?). In fact I am very flexible in regards to mode of thought — I spit back rebuttals to people in the way they think, using their own logic.

“for all the wrong reasons.”

What wrong reasons? I am not doing this for any ulterior motive — I only seek to cleanse mainstream culture of insidious prejudice and misconception. That has been my sole aim.

“Tell me, are you helping your parents pay the bills? ”

I have one parent — the other parent abandoned the family seven years ago, and until 2007, we had no real income for several years. If you follow the link to my blog, you may realise the anxiety I have over financial aid since I have zilch saved up for school.

I don’t even have a car to drive to work. I am constantly borrowing rides from friends. I’ve had no chance to stop at a Wendy’s to say, “Hey, I’m looking for a position…” which is just as well anyway since I barely have any time anymore. (I am stuck at home at the moment because there’s a huge snowstorm outside.) My mother takes her car and drives up dozens of miles away. Do you realise something? Most often, it is the rich children who can afford to work and work at fast food restaurants. Best of all, their parents usually pay for their car and their gasoline. My dual education has been entirely funded by the state, and my university adds insult to injury by making me pay “transport” fees for parking and health and other services even though I don’t even have a car. Life ain’t no High School Musical, I hope you know.

“Again, please use your knowledge not to impress others, but to help the world.”

That is exactly what I have been aiming to do. I seek not impress others (unless it affects culture). Why am I so hostile to some people? It’s because their mindset perpetuates ignorance in the world. Bigots are the worse as they may pass on their disease to others.

In fact I’ve been rather hostile to those who want to use knowledge just to be a smartass (cue my attack against the so-called grammar nazi for calling someone out for using the singular they) — which is why I am hostile to language pedants in general, and people who say that people speaking perfectly acceptable variants of English (I mean dialects, as opposed to second-language pidgins) — sometimes variants older than Londoner English — somehow don’t know “proper English”, because THEY are the ones who are self-righteous, THEY are the ones who perpetuate hate with their bigotry and ignorance, and THEY think they know what the English language is when THEY in fact do not. My vitriol has been purely reactionary — an eye for an eye. When such people’s bigotry is corrected, then the world will indeed be a better place (one of my goals is to reform the bigoted language policies of my country, and reform language pedagogy).

Why is it that you call me out on being elitist (being snobbish, self-righteous, etc.) when I in fact am opposing elitism by giving the true elitists a taste of their own medicine?

“You’re so white, it’s sickening. Only a white bitch would spend the time you just did responding to some phantom menace on the internet. Get over yourself. Nobody cares.”

She’s more tolerable than most of this people in this thread, actually.

(And I’m far from phantom — my real identity is not obscured, if you realised that aliases in green are clickable.)

I haven’t called you out on your erroneous arguments, either. The idea of a country belonging to another group (or some outside entity) simply because some group with origins from some external land happen to be more numerous makes me wonder if you be familiar with the idea of assimilation at all.

You’re a joke, Dude, nothing more….just like this blog. Why would I click on your name, white boy? You mean nothing to me and you have nothing to offer anyone, anytime. Get over yourself. For all practical purposes, you don’t exist, so quit thinking you do.

Note that I am actually quite resentful of many whites and mainstream American culture, and I have an aversion to many whites.

The best part is that if you hadn’t realised already, I am a Chinese Singaporean and a first-generation immigrant. I am familiar with the internal conflict between assimilation and identity.

I’m not asking you to click on anything — it’s just that you can’t justly call anyone phantom or anonymous, or accuse them of cowardice if they’re not afraid to release their identity. I’m not the type to make attacks because I think I’m safe.

But there is insidious racism that is in abundance — that people think they are not bigoted, when they are in fact, are. I have suffered that too — and you (as a non-white, I assume) should know better than to adopt the same bigotry used against you. (The only time when retaliatory racism bigotry justified is when it’s being used for rhetorical purposes in argument, in order to point out to bigots the flaw of their argument and world view.)

Dude, being a white boy, at least per the satirical sentiment of this blog, is not about the color of one’s skin, but, rather, a state of mind….a state of mind which you so happen to possess and is readily apparent in your self-important blathering.

You are a white boy, Galosapien. Face it and laugh at yourself and then go jump off a cliff.

Our boys are multilingual. They speak English, Scots, Doric, Cockney and Strine. As to what socio-economic group that puts us in, I haven’t the foggiest. I’ve never seen one that includes multilingual swineherds.

As I’ve mentioned before, I only do black men, but I’m going to make an exception with Galoisien. The guy’s a Strapping Stud and I can smell his healthy ripe sack a mile away. Come here you hunk of burning love, you, and give Sheila23 some of that love.

I’m afraid Kashi’s right, Galopian, you are ever so white. It shows. Also, you are every bit as much a troll as everyone else posting to this blog, you’re just too white to admit it. You’re so white that you’re not only a troll who doesn’t know he’s one, but you’re a also a Blog Hog Troll, which is the worst form of a troll. Get some help…fast.

I would be very happy if the children of all complexions in these United States could communicate effectively in English. Being multilingual is a good idea, learning the language of the country in which you live is a necessity.

By the way, New Hampshire is one of the few states that has English as an official language.

You’re showing your whiteness once again, Galocution. White people see racism eveywhere, and so do you, so you are white. Every other word out of your mouth is racism or racist. God, you are so white, we might as well call you Casper.

White people, like kat, love to say “have a great day!” They especially love to do it in signing off on their e-mails. It doesn’t matter that they don’t mean it, or that the sentiment unequivocally belies the content of their e-mail message. What matters is that you never forget to sign off without saying “have a great day!” Think of it like saying “peace be with you” when shaking someone’s hand during a Catholic religious service. It’s a friendly gesture, even if you have just excoriated the person for no good reason.

“At the end of the day, it is what it is, and you’re fired, in theory.

For me, I evaluate the usefulness/potential gain of learning a language and then go from there, which is why I’m studying Chinese; I considered Arabic and Hindi for the same reason. I don’t really have a desire to speak any African languages because there isn’t a demand for it, and French/Spanish are already in steady supply. Languages like German and Italian are only useful in Germany and Italy, which is kind of pointless for me since I don’t plan to ever live there.

It’s true that Spanish has been de-valued by white people because it’s associated with brown people from down South, not with Spain. I am a Spanish major, and anthropology too (I am a VERY wordly, well-informed white girl) and whenever I tell people what I study, they say something along the lines of “Oh that’s cool, I’m a French minor.” WTF?

I’d say this one is right on!!!! Hell, I’d give up everything and go work for Doctors without Borders if I could speak French. And damn my parents for not sending me to a school with French in the curriculum. Just that damn Spanish.

“White people believe that if they had been given French language instruction when they were younger, their lives would have turned out very differently. Instead of living in the US, they would be living and working abroad for the United Nations or some other organization with a headquarters in Switzerland or The Hague.”

my diddy moved us to toronto when iwas younger where i learned some french which i then used when living in brussels, beligum!!! HA HA its TRUE

Most non-white people outside of the Americas speak anywhere from three to six languages. Many white Americans marvel over the fact that Europeans speak multiple languages. But the average African or Indian speaks more languages than the average European.

As a black man born in Africa, raised in the states & Hong Kong, and living in Tokyo, I can safely say its not just white people, but all Supernational (people who have traveled to more than one country) as well, lulz. I blogged once

I dont think that as white people age, they become more and more angry with their parents. I believe this has nothing to do with the color of your skin. Every person can go through this, it all depends on the way you were raised. If your parents raise you in a bad manner, then you could grow up to hate everything about them. A Black, Mexican, and White people all go through this. I dont understand why someone would think that it had anything to do with where you come from. Also, white people learning a different language has nothing to do with their parents. I know a lot of people that are white and know spanish, and were never taught by their parents, so i really dont understand why this is.

I really don’t under stand the concept of this cause all the white people that I know love there moms and dads and the only language that they know how to speak is English. Also who cares what people want to do with there kids or there lives it is there decision. If they want to hate their parents for not teaching them another language, why are they signaling out the white people because not only do things like that but most races want there children to pursue in life and they will do anything to make that happen. All people think that if there parents would have done something different there live could have been better than it is now. So it is not just white people who feel this way but they are a big majority. Because in my lifetime I have heard my mother say that if my nana would have raised her better she would be a better person even though she is great. So we all feel like there is room for change in our lives

by the way, what’s the kid in the tire have to do with this entry?
add a thought bubble thats a mess a languages. doesn’t even have to make sense cos in my opinion, a majority of your american users couldn’t read it anyhow. i could be wrong, but what does it matter anyway?

Having skipped every other comment just so I can leave my own…actually bi-lingualism *isn’t* desirable at all in one’s children (being able to speak another language in their presence that they cannot understand is very convenient at times) unless and until they attend a prestigious prep or college where language immersion houses are architecturally desirable.

I’m Canadian and as French and English are our officials languages it’s not the unique to speak or want to speak both. Public schools offer both too – so it’s not an elitist thing and a good way to get a government job or, in some places you need to be bilingual to work at the mall or, anywhere.

And frankly most ‘white people’ in Europe speak at least two languages, some of the school systems requite two languages beyond your first. I don’t think this blog is really about ‘white people’ but about ‘white Americans’ if that.

“Fundamentalists are intolerable. Live and let live, may there be peace and love throughout ALL creation…”

No, you misinterpret what “fundamentalist” means, and in fact fundamentalism is an inherently rational and intellectually consistent movement. Perhaps you are mixing up true fundamentalists with false ones like Pat Robertson, etc.

Tolerance is a nice thing, but not an end to itself, and there must be a distinction between the promotion of intellectual and theological discussion and a meaningless message of “do whatever your heart tells you”. Otherwise you risk descending into Polonius’ inane chatter.

Note that I don’t say I dislike whites in general, just many whites (out of proportion with the normal distribution) and this correlation is not due to the fact of inherent whiteness, but rather a cultural flaw that has been the baggage of whites. (And one that many seem unable to detect.)

And you do misquote me, maca. The guy I was attacking was intolerable in himself. He accused my fellow youths of causing the downfall of the English language in their tendency to use slang and cannabis, which I found an utterly idiotic thing to say, and it is a good omen of his bigotry (believing that those who speak a variant of English are speaking inferior forms of English — this is itself, a form of hatred).

I only attack the intolerable. It is eye for an eye — retributive justice. Giving the bully a taste of his own medicine.

#613 Kay, of course this blog is about white Americans (even though it was created by a hoser), but it’s not even about white Americans it is about a certain type of white American. Most white American don’t even fit into this stereotype but there is a certain subculture urban elite that for the purpose of this blog are referred to as “white”. This blog is not about race, it is about a culture. For the purpose of this blog, if you are European, you are not white. Canadians, maybe you have as much of the same cultural characteristics as Americans to qualify, but that is tenuous. Now let me get back to drinking my f’n coffee and studying Portuguese……

Wait a minute… don’t the darkies speak Spanish? And the Celestials, those guys are for sure brown (ish?). And everyone in Francophone Africa (birthplace of the darkies) speaks French so really I guess the only acceptable option for my children is to teach them German. Or Dutch… wait, are there still black people in South Africa? Hmm. I guess German it is.

If you have no car you can WALK. It is not a parent’s duty (or anyone else) to provide a car/ride or gas for you to get somewhere.

You can use the internet to fill out applications. You can also call places and talk with employers.
There are alot of work from home jobs available. Especially when you are intelligent, which you certainly are.

If you want something bad enough (like a job) there is always a way. No EXCUSES!

*As a mother and a previously poor person I write this. I am not writing this to be mean but to inform.

Perhaps it hasn’t occurred to you but I live in Maine. That is, the nearest city centre is 30 minutes away. I already have to spend hours each week walking to my dual-enrollment classes.

I would LOVE to walk more. In fact, you whites seem to dislike walking, given that American public transport infrastructure is atrocious. In Singapore I walked all the time — it was actually possible to get to place to place without a car. Bloody car-loving infidels, corrupting the natural order of the world …

I’ll work when I finally get away from this backward land … maybe in Philadelphia, depending where I go next year.

This particular blog reminds me that white people also like adopting children from other countries. Particularly Asian countries. Admittedly, I live in a pretty affluent caucasian town, and each day I see at least a dozen white mothers with Asian children.

Galoisien…
Regardless of age, race, color or creed, one thing is for sure…
An eye for an eye can only lead to more blindness and ignorance. Revenge will not get you where you need to go and being a knowledgeable person, you should know this from History. (any culture’s history)

You can teach blacks French and English, you can then teach them the principles of Christianity, you can pour millions in aid dollars in, have liberal white women think theycan make a difference — and still in Rwanda you had 1 million black people hack themselves to death with farm tools!!!!!

It’s happening in Kenya in 2008.

Oh sure “race is a construct”. Keep on dreaming anti-White idiots.

Is there a difference between a chihuahua and an Alakan malamute? or is that a “social construct” too?

Galoisien, you have spent much time trying to convince yourself against the obvious. That seems to be a form of self-hate.

By the way, there is NO DIFFERENCE between Detroit, New Orleans, Haiti, and sub-saharan Africa ……because “social” factors never matter when we are dealing with blacks and their failures everywhere.

Ha ha, this is so funny and true. Weirdly enough I do speak French and work in Switzerland for a UN agency. Oh, and despite living in France, my kids attend an English speaking school to learn English. They’re bi-lingual though. Does this make me white?? Love your blog. Keep it up:)

This is so funny- and comment #34 is so true! I have friends who live in California and they were looking to put their preschooler in a French speaking school. Instead they found a Mandarin emersion program!

I’ve just found out this interesting blog through a friend. Though I would agree with comment #640.
I am Asian who speaks English (duh), French, Japanese, Mandarin and Cantonese, all fluently. Lived in UK, Singapore, Osaka, Hong Kong and now in Paris.
Through my experience, I don’t think any certain ethnic has a particular habit or things they’d prefer. Only different places geographically do share differences in their habit of daily lives.

I believe most people have forgotten the purpose of language, it is only a way of communication. Without the intelligible information you would like to transmit, it doesn’t necessarily make you or your children any smarter than people who’s monolingual.

Speaking French may help your child to become a diplomat in the future since it’s a diplomatic language. Given that your child would attend a UNESCO gala or some UN gala with the big rollers in the future. Though being forced by journalist to have an entire interview in French just like Tony Blair had recently, isn’t just for anyone.

As the French TV reported recently, the French schools overseas are doing very well these days since many Americans want to put their kids into a French school, it’s a “bourgeois” trend. Little did they know that French school system isn’t the one you want to be in, if you want your children to be “elite”. I’ve known teachers and students who were in Lycée Française de XXX (name of cities), a math teacher was drunk all the time, a chemistry teacher whom I’ve bumped into, in a club one day, was high on drugs (convenience of being a chemistry teacher, perhaps?). Most students I know who’ve attended French schools didn’t really become Einstein or Freud.. more like, otherwise.

My point is that, parents put too much responsibilities on the schools on how to educate their children. Of course the main purpose of the school is to prepare children ACADEMICALLY to enter the society, but then, have the parents thought about the better education the children could achieve is from them instead? Communication is important between parents and children, you can spend all the money you want to shower your children with gifts and put them in the best school on earth. But if you have no time to be bothered to communicate with them, the school is not to blame when they’re skipping classes and partying all the time.

True story since I’ve lived it. Though my parents never forced me to learn any languages, it was many other things altogether. Many Asian parents are very strict to their children… in Japan is even worse. Mine put me through a 5-hour private classes rally each day after school for so many years, since they were never there anyway, better keep me occupied. Now I still love them dearly, from a VERY long distant.

Merci aux américains d’aimer autant la France; nous vous adorons aussi.
(Thanks to Americans for liking France so much; we also love you ;-))
Sorry I didn’t read ALL these very interesting comments! I’m French, I live in the States after having married an American, and teach French to children and adults.
One piece of advice to American White parents or parents-to-be: beware of the French schools, the system is very strict and too many teachers are too hard on kids (I don’t know about the drinking and the drug abuse though).
I totally agree with post 648 about thinking more to give your children the curiosity to learn in general, to develop them into passionate, multi-gifted people, and above all, people who will be interested in others. Speaking a foreign language should definitely open you to living a fuller life, but the learning words only will not suffice…
Bonne chance! (good luck)

who knew. there is a magnet program in the San Diego Unified School District. Where by 18 public school operate using special programs e.g. French full Immersion/Spanish dual immersion. These programs allow a % of students by address zip code into the program and the largest % coming from the neighborhood where the school resides. The schools are put in economically depressed areas, bussing in from more affluent ones- but only in smaller numbers.
I happen to have studied French & live in the neighborhood of this school. Doesn’t it makes more sense to enroll your kindergarten child in a program you have language tools in. i love brown people, sorry. i don’t fear Spanish. sorry. i believe living in Southern California, my kid is going to absorb all the bi-lingual Spanish around her naturally. adding any foreign language is a good thing. racism, no way. just utilize what is available to you? Of course the NYT is going to speak of the affluent but why should we assume it’s speaking across the board?

So glad I’m not in So-Cal. Doesn’t this blogger know when White people say that, it is all BS, just being “Nice” to minorities, like telling someone “No, that dress doesn’t make you look fat”. We don’t really care if our kids can speak other languages. It is just Small-talk, like “Oh yeah, your hair looks great” (regardless of how it looks). Same principle with the language stuff ” Oh , that is soo neat-o your kid is bi-lingual” really means ,” Good thing your kid learned English too, or we would have to pay for more ESL classes. Thanks for trying to assimilate, your call is important to us…” It is F*CKING HOLLOW that kind of White people small-talk. You ACTUALLY think we MEAN IT!?
Gawd.

I speak four and a half Middle Eastern languages (two dialects arabic, farsi, turkish, and hebrew), but I’ve never left the states – or even New York – for more than five months at a time. I’m 23 years old and I have a ridiculously hot girlfriend who has on more than one occasion forced me to talk dirty to her in arabic.

I think that makes me better than all of you. Especially that weird creepy racist up in the 640s.

anyway, this post is dead on! hehehe I’ve babysat for parents who want their kids to speak Portuguese and English. its sooo funny cause you know the kids will forget it by the time they’re 13 and trying to be cool.

Weird you should insist that they don’t want their kids to learn Spanish. Around me, there are nothing but Spanish immersion schools and parents are clamoring to get their kids in. Believe me, I live with walking stereotypes of yuppie white folks and not a single kid is learning French.

What is the difference between Detroit, black New Orleans and Zimbabwe? Oh, do tell us sucker!!!

Wherever blacks are in the majority — anywhere in the World — it will be a failed society. Is there even one exception?

It’s not Whites’ fault. Liberal whites are in denial, and ironically for all the preaching of “integration” etc. they do, always live in White communities and use private schools. Bwahahahaaaa!!!!!

The Clintons and Chelsea are a prime example of this. Same with Bush who adores Mexicans because he’s never functioned with them in a real context. Texas public schools are horrible and getting worse as they become more non-White.

one of the school mum’s at our school told me her 4 1/2 year olds can speak 2 languages, far out i thought, that’s impressive (impressed cause i’m white and always wished for a second language but couldn’t be buggered to do anything about it). i asked if dad was from another country, out of interest what is the second language? greek she says, he’s a pastor – oh right, truth of it is they can count to 10 in greek….whitearse whitetrash, the other language they speak is ‘pingu’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGPhXrc78Jg .

I wish I had time to read all these posts! I have two kids in an immersion program, learning French. (To make matters doubly white , I had German au pairs when they were in preschool.)

I chose this school for a couple of reasons:
-I speak fluent French, and would like to visit and possibly work in a francophone country. If they to do, it makes life much easier
– It’s public, so its free!
– Test wise, the kids who attend there do better than the district average in all subjects, including math
– It is economically and racially diverse
– By the time they are in the work force, Africa and the Carribean could well be the economic equivalent of China & India today.

The school teaches five languages, and the most popular now is Chinese.

We do speak French at home in the kitchen. But it’s usually to the sound of NASCAR….

You obviously haven’t lived in Texas. All white people in Texas wish they could speak Spanish. In fact, all white people in Texas THINK they can speak Spanish and are into Latin American things (especially Mexican… sigh). They later forget that Spanish is spoken in many countries, and think only Mexico exists south of the border…

Mighty white Spain is the reason we are all in the Americas, from the tip of Canada all the way down to Tierra del Fuego in Argentina. So I would think that would be the second main language to learn here in the USA. In fact all USA should travel to Spain and learn some real history and culture. learn about: Picasso, Miro, Goya, Velazques, Dali, Luis Bunuel, Fernando Alonso etc

Spain conquered so much part of the world and left its foot prints cemented deeply. Even in the Philippines you will find all those Spanish surnames and Catholicism as their religion. Which I believe is the only Asian nation that has Spanish names and is Catholic.

Then in Latin America, specially in Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, El Salvador, you find all those brown folks who are actually Native American Indian or mixed, speaking terrible Spanish. Down there you also find plenty of blacks folks in places like Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Venezueal, Brazil etc since Spain, next to Portugal, were the first two Europe nations to bring slaves into America. Again, most of them also do have Spanish names and grew up with the catholic church telling them what to do. But they are still blacks.

BAck to those brown folks as many of you keep calling them here, what you get to see here is mostly the descendants of those Native American Indians who were here long before Spain, lead by a man name Cristobal Colon who became a Spanish citizens and whom all his children carry the surname Colon (he was never known as Christopher Columbus and would died laughing if he knew that his name had been anglicized).

So next time you see these brown Native American Indians (these was once their land) roaming around across USA or places like Arizona or CAlifornia looking for menial work in places like HomeDepot or cleaning dishes in the back of your favorite eating place or working hard harvesting those tomatoes, lettuce and the rest of the fruits that lands at your dinner plate at home. No less, they are call Hispanic/Latino which in fact they are none of that. They just happen to speak the Spanish language and have names like Pedro, Jesus, Antonio. Latinos are actually the Italians, French, Spaniards, Portuguese but that is another story.

Then also in Latin America if you drop down to Argentina you will see that all those Latins folks there are mostly Europeans: Spaniards, Italians, Germans and from many other Europe nations in that order. In fact Argentina, outside of Europe, is the most European country and they all speak beautiful Spanish.

And if you all want to see the most beautiful white people in Europe, then go to Spain. I remember the first time I went there in the mid 80’s and I was lost in Barcelona. I was planning of staying there for only a week. Then to my aid, for she noticed how lost I was, this charming tall and slim (you hardly find any fat people in Spain like you see here in fatland USA) beautiful blond, green eyes Spanish girl approached me and showed me where I needed to go. Two months later I was still in Barcelona staying at her flat.

Ernest Hemingway who love Spain, and passed himself as a Spaniard, so much said it best, “These are the most beautiful people I have ever seeing” and he was so right specially when you see the many folks with hair color ranging from blond to dark black and eyes who go from blue to light dark brown and among them plenty of green eyes Spaniards.
So is very ironic that in the USA we find an Indian peasant from Mexico or Ecuador doing our lawn and automatically we call them Hispanic or Latino. When this person is none of that for he is actually a Native American Indian. But this is as bizarre as calling a Jamaican “British” for he/she speaks English. It just doesn’t get more ignorant than that and that is why the USA is laugh so much around the world.

Why isn’t dutch mentioned here? The Dutch speak a whole multitude of languages, my dutch friends are learning dutch, english, french, german, latin and greek all at the same time!
And everyone wants to speak french, its true. I’m bilingual (my first language is Swedish) but I’ve been trying to learn french so I will be trilingual.

Thats weird because most white people in America are fighting to make English the one and only language. On a different note criticizing learning, whether its being a polyglot or whatever, is the work of a complete moron.

Every educated person in the rich world (Europe; later + North America) from the Middle Ages through the 19th centrury (and that wasn’t the majority of the population) learned several languages. It was assumed you could read Latin and Greek in the original. Maybe that aspect of the struggle to reach the elite is subconcious now.

What was it like in Pacific Asia? There are Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese people in Europe and America who can’t master plural nouns after 30 years of permanent residence in their new “white” country.

See #410, 644, 654 — See any of the posts by ‘Blanco is a European word’

Don’t try to tell me that this isn’t a blatantly racist site, don’t try to tell me that this is only lightly poking fun of “upscale-Caucasian yuppies,” because this blog definitely seems to reaffirm and provide fodder for the opinions of racist bigots like ‘Blanco is a European word’.

I didn’t know that racism could still be advertised so freely on the Internet as ‘intelligent satire’.

Wake up. You are on a racist blog Janice. It’s devoted totally to describing and satirizing the White race. Now are you claiming there aren’t differences? Then why are you here?

celebrate our diversity, OK? That means we aren’t all the same.

Janice is one of those idiot liberals, or perhaps a non-white that believes that the word racist only applies to whites. Actually, if you travel around the world, you will see that whites are the least racistly-conscious of all people.

Nothing in my comments is opinion, it’s fact…..which you seem to deny outright. Why? You are the bigot, and you cannot tolerate anyone’s opinion that doesn’t match your own personal point-of-view. That’s typical of Liberals.

Why is it, that after the European colonial powers exited their colonies, and provided the non-Whites with our languages, our architecture, standards for engineering, governmental, and legal systems, etc……that these people totally implode every singe time? without exception but perhaps only Singapore?

And these people flee from their independent nations, and they actually want to go to the “racist” White nations they hated in the first place! And they want to be called “British” or “French”!

Watch someone STILL try to pin the failures of the non-Whites on Whites.

Learning French in Canada can actually be pretty important and is not always a cultural luxury. While most Canadians can go through their lives only speaking English, the Quebecois generally have to be bilingual these days. As do any Anglophone Canadians who want to: work for the government, work in the national courts, work for the RCMP, get elected and a whole range of other important opportunities. This blog, though amusing is largely aimed at white upper/middle class yuppie Northern Americans in the post-college period of their life. A lot of the things on your list really don’t reflect anywhere else, including most of Canada

okay. so what does it mean if i was a second grader (7years old) and angry (at my parents) that I couldn’t learn another language? I had couple of spanish language books from a library sale (not even a bookstore) and put forth a slight effort to teach myself in third grade. my dream as a child was to be bilingual or multilingual, and i had similar dreams for my offspring should i ever choose to breed.

I love telling white people that I won’t teach my first language to my baby – guaranteed to get a rise! My first language (Russian) is perfectly European, but fell out of vogue at the end of Cold War.
And by the way, bilingual babies are a little slower to start talking. Naturally that’s a huge deal to a competitive white parent, so they usually don’t want to hear that. Also my multilingual nephew didn’t talk until he was three and a half when his parents were advised to stick with single language. But situations like that are rare.

Laughed all the way through this article however, I couldn’t help but wonder if being fluent in American Sign Language and planning on teaching my children to sign qualified? I’m self-taught. Also, I’ve dabbled in French, Italian, Spanish, hieroglyphics, Yiddish, Swahili and believe it or not Klingon!
Needless to say I am obsessed with communication and saddened that much of the population doesn’t take an interest in learning their own language any more much less a second.

#688 wrote: Needless to say I am obsessed with communication and saddened that much of the population doesn’t take an interest in learning their own language any more much less a second.

Kids in US schools are spending too much time learning about harriet tubman, rosa parks, MLK, homosexual marriage, etc. to spend time on the English language. Do they still teach British Lit anymore? It’s hard to see a mexican or a black even getting a passing grade in it.

What I just love are white people who hire Latina (here, usually Mexican) “nannies” in the name of “bilingualism.” This is packaged as appreciating and recognizing “culture”; an enlightened and hip preference in selecting a caregiver. In reality, it’s no different than the black caregivers of the past, but no one could get away with saying they wanted blackness to rub off on their kids. Same as before–cheap labor, easily discarded when the last kid goes to kindergarten.

This was great but yet again very localized I would say to the writers area. Here in PA we whites are running to the store or internet to learn spanish. We want to learn spanish to get more money at work because you get an extra dollar an hour if you know spanish. Some of us want to learn Chinese too because we want to know what the nail ladies/chinese take out workers are saying about us while we are partonizing their stores!!

Yes, it is insulting to me the picture that white people have of Spanish speakers, because I get affected by it! Whenever I speak it people look bad at me like if I was talking about them or something… even more because I’m super white as all my family is. I myself am very mad at the reputation that white, Spanish speakers from actual Spanish heritage have, and then the brown ones (Mexicans) look at me as if I am a beotch for being white and Spanish…

I’m in the worst position ever! Still, I wouldn’t change my heritage, just those lazy Hispanics that ruined our reputation!!!

Oh, and to #687: Are you crazy?! I LOVE Russian and wish I could speak it, and maybe it ‘fell’ with white ignorant people, just like Spanish. I would strongly suggest teaching it or else the kids might be mad at you in a globalizing world that languages are crucial… I say it from personal experience of kids that arent taught their parent’s native tongue- like my cousin who can’t communicate with my grandparents because he was raised in the US. But, obviously it’s your decision and I hope you don’t regret it (plus, speaking more than 1 language is very impressive, even more if it’s a hard one like Russian!).

Haha, I love this post. I am living proof that this is true. If my mother could have she would have enrolled me in a bilingual school, instead she settled for buying me lots of Babar and Madeline books and a private school where french classes started in kindergarten. It worked. I’m more or less fluent…

However, despite this achievment in whiteness I’m still sad that my father somehow managed not to pick up Hungarian from his grandmother or his father, and therefore could not pass it on to me. I would suggest that knowing your obscure ancestral language trumps all others!

My 2 year old speaks English (our first language) and German. We are not German, but it’s the language I can speak other than my native tongue. It took a long time for me to be able to function in another language, but my son has no problem at all. It can only open doors for him in the future. Plus, it’s a way for me to ask him questions that (usually) only we understand, thus avoiding embarrassment or the like.

If he decides later that he want’s to speak Korean, that’s fine with me. Just one more language is not too much to ask.

I do not want my kids to be “mulit-lingual”. I don’t even want ot be multi lingual. I am American, and the worlds new language is English, so I want everyone else to be multi lingual, but not me or my white children. Thank you for having one of the all time stupidest websites. If my dumbass friend hadn’t emailed me this sight, I would have never come here. Oh and fuck the wire too…. that’s right, I said it.

I agree with you on this one. I’m Canadian and am still bitter that my parents didn’t put me into a French-immersion program in elementary school. My favourite city is Montreal and it would be so much easier to re-locate if I could speak French! I do speak Spanish though after going to university in Mexico for a year : ) Speaking ANY second language carries prestige!

I did the Marry-To-Save-Money (a Russian) trick, but I’m still sending my son to French school. There is a public one that you get into by lottery, but if we don’t get into that one, it’s off to private.

The way I see it is that he’s gonna be really happy and have TONS of choices if he knows BOTH languages! Right!?!?

My native tongue is German. Been trying to raise my kids bilingually, but I’ve given up. My (white American) friends pay lipservice to “how great and advantageous” it would be to “teach” my kids German. Yet somehow they never fail to get mad when I actually speak it w/ my kids. They feel left out. So I’ve resorted to speaking English only. I’m a bit sad, cause I’d like them to know their other culture, but I’m also lazy and discouraged.

Many Americans (white or not) don’t understand what “growing up bilingual” really means. They think about it as if it were something like being your kids’ own personal language professor. The fascination with “foreign” language comes only when you see it as a sign of status symbol and luxury, as many white Americans do, when frankly for most people other than white Americans speaking multiple languages is a survival skill and has little to do with talent or academic proficiency.

I don’t see how learning “castillian spanish” would be different than learning “regular spanish”. Except for local slang, most latin countries don’t have a specific dialect hard enough for other spanish speaking people to understand.
and i doubt a white person would pick up an accent and if you hear spanish from a white person you most likely won’t think “oh he/she learned from a colombian”

I am Mexican, although one my grandfathers and his family came from directly Spain. I speak English and Spanish very well. I also picked up Cantonese and some Tagalog over time thru friends. I can travel to any Spanish speaking country with relative ease. I understand a little Portuguese, French and of course Italian, because of my knowledge of Spanish. I have family that is part French and some that are part Italian. Also Italian, Spanish and French performers go to Latin America to sell their records. Like Eros Ramozzotti, Laura Pausini, Nek, Manu Chau (Mano Negra), Mecano, DiBlaisio?, Miguel Bose, Ana Torroja, David Bisbal. I am have always been a very curious person and I continuely ask others about their cultures & languages.

And to those of you who think this is racist or demeaning or wonder “what whites”…this is suppose to be funny. It isn’t suppose to be true 100%. Nothing is true of everyone all of the time. Nothing. So seriously, learn to laugh at yourself and see the humor in world.

Since you mentioned jazz, there should be a post for it. Though it is essential to clarify that white people do not like actual jazz (though they may pretend to for purposes of going to a jazz club/bar to seem cool), what they like is “smooth jazz.” To be smooth jazz, a song could be from any genre, as long as it is done slowed down, with a sax and a flute included in the instrumentation. There may also be an acoustic guitar solo involved. It should be an instrumental, although breathy female vocals are somewhat acceptable.

In short, “smooth jazz” is the fancy name for elevator music, or, Muzak.

White people like making jokes about elevator music, but if you put it on a radio station with a name like “The Wave,” indicative coolness and relaxation, then it is “smooth jazz” and very cool.

Jazz performed by white people who have intensely studied jazz chords and intervals is also acceptable. These are different from regular smooth jazz because they are original “compositions.”

Actual jazz, performed by black people is probably not any good, unless heard in a jazz club (see above). Likewise, any jazz variants from an era in which that was the popular form (40s or earlier) is not cool, and may very well be considered old fogey stuff by middle aged white people. However, with college aged youths this kind of music is cool, but only if listened to on vinyl (which should also have a post, if it doesn’t already).

to #720:
It’s not the Castilian -dialect- that is of interest, it is the -accent-, much how a country accent gives the perception of lower class/poorly educated, whereas most Americans hear a British accent and think it is very posh and sexy.

Spain, being in Europe, is considered higher class than other Spanish-speaking countries, which only speak Spanish because they were colonized by Spain.

Personally, being half Mexican, I think the Spanish accent is kind of funny sounding… There is nothing sophisticated about a lisp! I vote for Argentina in the sexy accent contest. But these are the same people (white people) that think French is very romantic, despite giving the impression that the speaker has a very bad cold and is in desperate need of some over the counter medication.

After reading this post (and the 700+ comments), I am not sure anymore what I am. If you look at my website, you can see that I am very interested in promoting Hebrew language and culture in the U.S. I always thought this made me appear ‘counter-cultural’ in the mono-cultural white American milieu (sorry for the French). Now I’m starting to think that nothing could be more “white” than this – namely, raising kids in the U.S. while speaking to them in a ‘foreign’ language.

The irony, of course, is that most American Jews have no knowledge of Hebrew, and no desire to learn or speak it. Does this make them “more white” than me (i.e. less differentiated from the white mainstream), “less white” than me (i.e. not engaging in the apparently popular bi-lingual trend you describe here), or something else entirely (i.e. “unconscious” about ethnicity and its broader, sociological ramifications)?

Perhaps, some white-ethnic Americans strive to “fit in” by abandoning any distinctive outside culture. Others (who, presumably, already feel like they fit into the Anglo mainstream) seek some intrigue through the pursuit of a suitably foreign, yet not “threatening”, alternative culture. When people try to reclaim an ancestral culture or pass it along to their children, a third (and very different) approach – and a very different form of bilingualism – emerges.

In other words, I’m not sure that young Jews learning Hebrew, or Greek-American kids attending Greek School (like that “Big Fat Wedding” movie from a few years ago), would belong in the same category as upscale NYC parents sending their children to a private French academy to broaden their horizons. Furthermore, “ethnic” language learning, while perhaps indicative of a common trait among white ethnics, seems intended to prevent future generations from thinking of themselves as simply “white” (despite the broader culture’s ability to promote this concept of whiteness).

BTW, what almost all groups of Americans seem to share, unfortunately, is a lack of prolonged, direct participation in foreign cultures. This widespread sense of insularity is a real challenge in an increasingly globalized world. It makes me feel even less secure about the future here in the US.

Busted. Does it count if your child attends a public French immersion elementary school? Would it help if I told you said elementary school is a city public and not a suburban public? Would I make things even better for myself if I told you the school was located in an undesirable neighborhood in said major midwestern city? Probably not at all. Then again I am a white person.

She meant the mestizos and amerindians that are non-Whites and the majority of the Mexican population. Mexico may be somewhat diverse, but it is HUGELY Hispanic and non-White. It doesn’t have many blacks or mulattoes either. It’s not that diverse.

It’s like one of the housewives from “Real Housewives of New York.” The ugliest one of the bunch who’s stick thin and has a fugly smile… She and her husband hired a french au pair and will only communicate with their little son in french.

Some people on a site I go to were talking about this blog being funny (white people) but I must be the most ignorant white person out there…I just don’t get the entries in this blog. Sure, I chuckled a few times and I can laugh at myself, but I don’t see any similarities AT ALL between me (or anyone I know) and these posts.

It’s like one of the housewives from “Real Housewives of New York.” The ugliest one of the bunch who’s stick thin and has a fugly smile… She and her husband hired a french au pair and will only communicate with their little son in french.

Funny comment. Many of these Jews inexplicably started giving their kids White names too. Like Brandon, Cameron, etc.

As far as post 742 “anonymous” what does being a jew have to do with naming your kid brandon or not – do non jews own those names, are jews (me included) only allowed to name our kids Gil, Shalom, and Ezra?

oh and one more thing – if that fugly stick thin woman on “Real Housewives of New York.” is jewish, then i’m george bush. Another stereotype – guess what genius – NOT all rich people in NYC are jewish.

People learned English when they came here generations ago because most didn’t use this country in a transient manner like nowadays. You were proud to be an American & didn’t speak about your ethnicity. You were here for life.

There’s nothing wrong with learning another language these days. People travel moreso than ever before. The problem is those that refuse to do as the Romans do & expect their host countries to now cater to them.

This blog really ought to be called “Stuff the Well-Off like.com”. Most of white America has very little in common with people who send their kids to multilingual schools. We’re too busy trying to just survive the crap that the upwardly mobile minority have done to us – i.e sending our industrial base to Asia so they can afford multilingual schools while we “re-train” for some $8 an hour job. This kind of thing historically ends in bloodshed and the multilingual kids wind up dead.

Hogwash! Down here in good ol’ Dixieland, us REAL Southern folks (not carpetbaggers or “white guilt” liberal with no racial awareness or pride) adhere to English-only and expect others to do the same. Assimilation should trump “diversity” (aka – Marxism spawned socialist engineering!

Assimilation NOT “Diversity” (ie – socialist engineering spawned from Marxism)! We should hold strong to our English langauge heritage & stop pandering to those who are trying to tear apart our once-great Constitutional Republic!

It is respectable for a White person to understand Spanish, so that they can help a mono-lingual Latino or Latina in distress, but it should never be spoken to other White people, except when demonstrating the difference between “real” Spanish and that of the Brown people who take care of the lawn.

French only sounds good when White women or Black men speak it (this does not apply to Cajuns, who are a distinct sub-group of White people). Nonetheless, it is useful for White men who want to talk to White women, or who want to know what Black men are saying to their dates, or who want a job with the UN.

Whatever the language, it is important for the children to learn all the curse words first, including the forms used by older “square” people and those used by the younger “hep-cats”. Few things are more embarrassing to a White person than misusing a foreign expletive and having native speakers laugh.

it is not a question of veneer and stylish cosmopolitanism… our economic base has changed. our unions have been gutted. our heavy industry spirited away to mexico, russia, former soviet bloc, the indian subcontinent, pacific rim, and anywhere else people will transform our hourly minimum into their daily max.

there is no reclaiming eisenhower’s and jfk’s can-do america of ambitious engineering and prodigious manufacturing. no one knows how to build things. and no one needs to know. let the bangledeshi build our widgets, we are too busy organizing green technology galas.

signifiers have replaced steel. you must at least speak legalese, medicalese, wallspeak, federalese, and hence the vicious [white?] battle for Graduate Degrees.

what this blog has characterized as a white obsession is really just a 21st century postindustrial necessity. you can either be folky and maladapted. or cosmo and employed.

I do not believe in multiculturalism and Political Correctness. This blog is for the leftist uneducated white folk. This is America. Get over it. If the immigrants don’t like Americanism, send them back. I don’t want these ungrateful immigrants to destroy my culture and way of life. We are starting to wake up to the ungrateful guests that we have invited into our home. Time to send them packing.

our jobs pack themselves professor. these people will have our jobs here or they will have them “there.”

FDR is a hero. But he fucked us all royally in the long run. Big unions, workers rights, 8-hour day, the entire three decade tradition of middle class building, these all sound like good things, Clinton and Obama refer to them as if they were still possible.

THEY ARE NOT.

One billion people live on 1 dollar per day. Another two billion live on 2-10 per day. as long as a body is healthy enough to be trained and inserted into a manufacturing job, then they will do the job that might otherwise go to an American who, because of FDR’s legacy, would expect 9-15 per hour plus benefits.

I am an affluent white person and cannot relate to any of the crap on this website. It should be renamed
“StuffPretentiousAssholeWhitePeopleLike.com”. Please come down to our real planet called Earth. The constant, ongoing reference to “White People” is also very derogatory and downgrading.

“I do not want my kids to be “mulit-lingual”. I don’t even want ot be multi lingual. I am American, and the worlds new language is English, so I want everyone else to be multi lingual, but not me or my white children. Thank you for having one of the all time stupidest websites. If my dumbass friend hadn’t emailed me this sight, I would have never come here. Oh and fuck the wire too…. that’s right, I said it.”

I love hearing this, because if I know you’re like that, I can talk shit about you in front of your face without you knowing it. In Mandarin, Cantonese, and Spanish.

Prof. Watson sez: I do not believe in multiculturalism and Political Correctness. This blog is for the leftist uneducated white folk. This is America. Get over it. If the immigrants don’t like Americanism, send them back. I don’t want these ungrateful immigrants to destroy my culture and way of life. We are starting to wake up to the ungrateful guests that we have invited into our home. Time to send them packing.

Your comments are also a barrel of laughs not to mention myopic and fully ungrounded in reality.

You obviously don’t know that assimilation is a 2-way street – an immigrants not only adapt to the larger American society, they also bring their heritage and add to it. Coming from an immigrant family, I can tell you we ARE America. Just not your static conception. We build society, pay taxes, and will keep it running for the benefit of your hidebound xenophobic sorry ass.

Culture is always a work in progress – it changes over time and doesn’t become static.

Dude, French-speaking children is sooooo 2004. Any white person who’s anybody now has Chinese-speaking children. Even better, children that speak some sort of lesser-known asian tongue, such as Thai, Indo or Bhutanese.

This can be attained not only by marrying an asian person, but by hiring an asian-speaking nanny from your local chinatown or similar asian enclave.

Why is teaching children to be multilingual so threatening to the hoi poloi in this country? I HAD to learn French growing up simply to be able to talk to the kitchen staff and Spanish for the yardmen and the maids. I continued my language studies at finishing school and abroad. Later I studied Swedish with my mom’s masseur, whom she “kidnapped” from Tallberg and brought to the States. The poor should
encourage their children to take advantage of learning other languages such as Spanish, especially as the flood of Hispanics is upon us. (My driver is from Guatamala.) But first they need to learn to speak ONE language, namely English. OMG, what I hear today on golfing day, ce’st de trop!

As my ancestors have done this historically (first Europe then USA), so we are ready to jump like a flea to the next big dog, and that is China. The move is in the process, I have been in gold for over 1 year.

“those lazy hispanics” didnt ask “you spaniards” to take over their country and plague their people with numerous diseases, steal their gold, and rape their women!! learn your world history and get the facts straight. Also, most hispanics are known for being hard and dedicated workers, not for being lazy as you implied. get off your high horse!!

I must be an odd white person cause I don’t want my children to learn French. I want them to learn Spanish since it is becoming a second language in the U.S.
My sister in law was denied a job as a paralegal because she doesn’t know how to speak Spanish. The majority of clients where she applied for this job speak Spanish .
So why is it that Spanish speaking people do not learn English? They are living here in the U.S , become a citizen , and still don’t know or (refuse?) to learn/ speak English.
I agree with ignorance sbliss , hispanics are known for being hard and dedicated workers.

Love it!!! I am trying to learn Spanish for a trip to Peru next year. I will be in Peru for 3 weeks, but have always wanted to learn a second language. One thing I have found with my friends (I’m white & so are they) is that when they have children they get so competitive. My husband and I can’t have children and I am starved for any intellectual conversation when in the company of white breeders. Please, if you are reading this comment, it is acceptable to discuss news, global warming, books, movies anything. I concede, you have wonderful children, you are balancing your work/life dynamic brilliantly, in the game of life you have won. Now, can I not hear about it or have to subtly stroke your ego’s for the next 20 years!!!!

I second Flores in comment 55, who says that South American Spanish (New World Spanish) sounds SO much better than Castilian Spanish!! I say this as someone living in Morocco who has contact with both forms.

Furthermore, having had contact with both Brazilians and Portuguese, I can say the same thing about that language. Brazilian Portuguese sounds SO much better (in fact, the Brazilians make fun of the Portuguese accent)! Now knowing both accents, I can see why.

If people in America knew this, they wouldn’t be choosing to learn CASTILIAN Spanish.

One last comment, in my opinion, French from France sounds much better than the Canadian French accent (just my two cents).

I totally agree, I grew up speaking only one language and I was so mad at my parents because they never really encouraged me to learn a second language, it was until I entered highschool that I started to learn other languages but it turned out that I don’t have the right motivation to practice and learn more lol. After highschool I went to Russia to study and Ive been living here for the past 5 years! And yeah my russian is not that good but I manage to survive here.
No white parents want their kids to learn Spanish unless one of the parent is hispanic. After all white people think that Spanish is not as sophisticated as French. I happen to like spanish girls that why I learn Spanish lol.

This is the very first post I read on this blog. And to think that I read it on the same day that my-son-who-went-to-the-Ecole-Bilingue started his new job in Africa with MSF. Because the only thing better than an organization with headquarters in Switzerland or The Hague is an organization with headquarters in Paris.

i was raised a bilingual kid. my dad worked in paris for 8 years and i spent most of my teen years at an all girls school there, living in the states during summer break. my parents thought that it would lead me to bigger and better things, like being the head of a multi-national corporation. right now i am working the graveyard shift in the cancellation department of XM radio and living in an apartment with two roomies. i think the only french i even speak anymore is people get me to say things like “one time at band camp i rode my uncle’s giant pig through a forest of grapefruits.” when they are trashed. yeah, go international education!

My parents tried to teach me the few things they remembered from highschool french… then I became a french major, studied abroad in quebec and france… I’m glad they didn’t try harder. I speak french well enough and have started to learn russian. My boyfriend dips into german. So if we have kids… they will hate me for all the language learning.

Great entry and great responses. My four year old is trilingual and speaks Dutch, Greek, and English because that’s all we speak to him at home (and the Internet is great for pirating Bob the Builder in 20 different languages!!). He’ll probably go to Spanish immersion elementary school – but when it comes down to it we are just try-hards – after all it ain’t Francaise!!

Anyway. Besides the fact that Asian girls are often cute, Asians are considered Super White (as long as they are from the “right” parts of Asia. And often times it is true even though the values derive from other origins: whites and many Asians share work ethics and like to buy similar things after they make it. Toned down beamer instead of Escalade. You get the idea.
I feel bad for Asian guys though. They will always be looked at by women as tech support – 325xi or not.

I speak English and Spanish…but I happen to mix up my conversations with words as well from German, Italian, some French, Japanese, Chinese, and Arabic. (Mind you, none of these other languages I am NOT at all fluent in. I just happen to know many words, but couldn’t even speak with anyone from those linguistic regions.)

Craig the reason is that the majority of Americans either have ADD…. or don’t want to embarrass ourselves because we never seriously attempted to master the language or immerse ourselves in our study abroad opportunity… like my ex who went to an English speaking country. Besides it adds to the number of languages we “know” sort of.

By the way since being shown to this blog I have to say it’s quite funny, and true to form I have to say I am proud of my native-speaker German, Mandarin, Norwegian multilingualism and if you can;t tell English. (It;s complicated.) My English is the worst, so please point out any mistakes.

I think everyone (in the West) wants to learn French (I do too!). It has has to do with French being historically associated with the European aristocracy. As for Spanish it just doesn;t sound pleasant. I know I am just inviting criticism. And let;’s be honest with ourselves neither Spain nor any part of Latin America has really risen in its stock since its peak in the sixteenth century.

Oh and to correct one of the above posters, Chinese is by far the most prevalent language worldwide. Also interestingly enough there are more German speakers than French worldwide. Possibly owing to the fact German is widely used in the scientific and business communities. And Norwegian well hey what can I say I;m biased…

galoisien — Did you not have to renounce your Singapore citizenship when you became an American citizen? Or is this another case of non-Americans having more rights in the US than naturally born US citizens? Some of us are getting more than a little bit annoyed with foreigners voting in our elections. The point is, you (or anyone else) cannot be an American AND another nationality, no matter what the one-worlder State Department says — you are either an American, or you are not. The revolution is coming. The Mexicans can learn English or go back home. The French-speaking White women can stay, as long as they do not insist on voting :) . (And, of course, Asian women can stay — they all speak English, anyway ((go figure)) .)

The only thing better than having multilingual kids is adopting children from another country and then going to language school with them. I have a daughter from China, and we spent three years in Mandarin language school. I went to learn the language and culture, and she went for playtime. To this day, I show off my Chinese at restaurants, hold big Chinese holiday parties, and follow Chinese current events. My daughter watches Hannah Montanna and doesn’t know Hong Kong from Hoboken.

I grew up speaking English (my native language) and Spanish (my grandmother’s language) and I still have yet to leave the USA except to go to Mexico 3 times. Oh well. So much for that dream job my mother might’ve had in mind for me at the UN…

Seriously though, being a bilingual kid is not at all impressive here in California, especially once people learn that my grandma is from Mexico. So what? So is everyone else’s around here! If you don’t speak Spanish, nobody cares, and if you do, nobody cares.

I will say this: There are many downsides to being a bilingual kid that the silly parents profiled in this article don’t think about. For instance, my mother worked in the health care industry, so guess who got to translate EVERYTHING for her when the non-English speaking latinos came in (who were most of the patients)? Also, any time we went to a Mexican restaurant I would have to explain what such-and-such a menu item was, or even occasionally apologize for my mother’s assumption that a Mexican guy who was there eating with his family was actually one of the staff…ugh…

It’s still worth it to have your kids learn another language, but damn, white people, don’t treat your kids like little circus performers because of it! I don’t go parading around my Spanish, and having your kids function as social intermediaries for you because you’re too lazy/stupid to actually learn another language (or too bigoted to assume that you can actually address a brown person in English?) is demeaning to the person you’re trying to communicate with, your child, and ultimately you yourself. Classic white people behavior, I’d say!

And what language do you think would have “social value”? Be realistic, French or any other European language won’t make you more popular. You can spend a lot of time trying to find someone who speaks French and you won’t be very lucky for a while.

Good point! And white Americans -notice I didn’t generalize- with their very bilingual language skills, think that Spanish in Spain is better than Latin American Spanish. They don’t notice what an ugly accent people in some parts of Spain people may have. Just like the accent that uneducated Hispanics have, Spaniards also may have it. Same thing applies with English, some British have a terrible accent, I’ve heard that Parisians look down on French people from the provinces, let alone to those from other countries. Even here in the US! English is stratified…who would like to speak like George W. Bush! Many white Americans are so pathetically provincial.

I wonder how many people write the truth in these boards? Everybody tries to give the impression they’re into learning a second or third language or having a relative studying it. I wonder how many of you are a bunch of liars? It turns out that I’m a very brown Mexican and I find very amussing how many supposedly white folks, or other supposedly Spaniards, or those self-described 100% whites from Latin America, talk about us. I’ve met people from Spain who have a terrible accent and who don’t even have a good spelling. Uneducated people in Spain are just as bad as people from any other Latin American country! Ive met U.S. citizens whose English is their first language and they’re spelling is not any better than mine! Even people in the U.S. elected TWICE a president who never learned how to pronounce “nuclear”. The truth is that many of you just use this board to put down others and that reflects more about your nature and personal quality than it does about those you try to put down. They can’t answer to your remarks and that makes your rambling unbalanced. I know this is supposed to be fun but when it’s at the expense of others it becomes rather pathetic.

Oh maaaan! I read adbusters, have some american apparel tshirts, like farmers markets, get drunk before 10am on Paddy’s Day (Oh did i mention I did my undergrad in Ireland?) oh I speak Swedish fluently.

As a sociolinguist, I can’t help but comment on the thread about Spanish in particular. Numerous studies have documented the varying PERCEPTIONS of different languages in different societies. These perceptions, also known as language ideologies, are just that: beliefs, not facts. It is definitely the case that in the US, the perceived “value” of Spanish is lower than that of French, but this reflects the historical biases of a dominant class in th US; it says nothing about any kind of empirically based quality of the language itself.

It is also the case that different REGISTERS of the same language have different social values in different contexts: for example, “standard English” and “standard Spanish” are perceived as the “good” and “correct” registers of those languages. It is certainly the case that a strong command of any standard language makes one more socially mobile and is perceived as demonstrating one’s education and “class,” but we all known multiple registers of our native language (slang, for instance). The same is true of one’s phonology or accent: in every society there are also more and less valued accents and regional language variants. The fact that GWB became president despite having a non-standard regional accent (Texan) and frequently using non-standard pronunciation (nukular) and diction (misunderestimated) says much about the anti-intellectualism of many Americans: non-standard usage, in many cases, is seen as a mark of one’s “authenticity.”

Mexican and Caribbean Spanish are right up there with Ebonics as languages that are perceived in highly racialized ways in the US right now. While I appreciate the liberal good will of those who have said that people should learn Spanish because it is “practical,” I also want to point out, as a researcher, that this attitude sometimes goes hand in hand with an implicit racialization as well: “Spanish is a practical language to have in order to communicate with cooks/maids/gardeners/ indigent patients etc.” What exactly is that endorsement of the “practical” aspect endorsing? “Practical/economically useful” is often set against “culturally enriching” or “beautiful.”

actually french is an official language for like 40 countries haha. i’m bilingual (and speak spanish and a little german) and have been in french immersion since i was 5 but in Canada it doesn’t cost money to be in the immersion program in fact its built into the regular public schools :)

Spanish is a highly desireable language for white people, provided that it is learned in Argentina. The accent should be emphasized, and time spent in Buenas Aires should be mentioned frequently. It is useful to make regular references to Argentina’s uniquely European vibe and excellent wines and meats. Such a white person will greatly appreciate any questions about gauchos.

I guess Spencer has never been in the capital city of Argentina, since he or she does not know how to spell the name of that city properly. And please, don’t say that you have been there or that your grandmother is from that country, nobody will believe it. To many people, the most precise and clear pronunciation in the Spanish language is from EDUCATED people from Castilla-La Mancha (Madrid) and from EDUCATED people in México City. The rest of the Spanish speaking world ALWAYS omit sounds or has too many unnecessary Anglicisms, which is a terrible habit.

german is also spoken in northern italy, austria, belgium, parts of the czech republic and of course switzerland. there are even communities in south america where it is spoken among the descendents of pre-WWI immigrants

Oh, goodness! Yeah, you got me on this one! Although, I really want my kids to learn SPANISH, not French. But I live in Texas, so that’s probably why! I am a Spanish minor, and absolutely love the language, and DO feel cheated that I didn’t have the opportunity to learn it at a young age. I went to Argentina this past summer for a few weeks and wished so badly that I was fluent – – – frustrating! (I’m working on it, though!)

Actually, Tecolote, surveys have been done of Spanish speakers across the world about what region they perceive produces the “best” and “purest” Spanish. The results generally go something like this: 1) Colombia (Bogota not Cartagena); 2) Mexico City; 3-4) central Spain or Lima. The very worst? The Caribbean and the U.S.

It sure is more fun to be racist than to look at the real world, but more white people learn Spanish (in CA at least) than any other language, mostly because our state has tons of people who speak nothing but Spanish. People with brown skin do not make white people uncomfortable, but you obviously hate white people for some reason.

The bilingual Spanish programs in public schools are a bad idea because it means that native Spanish speaking kids continue to learn in only Spanish, which only makes it harder for them to learn English down the line. Not because we hate Latin America.

That would be because if you find yourself in a country where few, if any, speak English, they most likely know French. We Americans love to explore, but there isn’t anywhere we can go where the French haven’t already been.

MY COUSINS YELL ALL THE TIME! I YELL ALL THE TIME TOO! MILK COST $3! A COW IS NOT A BIRD! WHEN THE MOON IS BLUE, SING ABOUT BING CROSBY! HI, HOW ARE YOU! I’M FINE! WHAT?! YOU WANT ME TO BE QUIET?! BITE ME!

Well, I hate Latin America. Have you seen coke prices lately? What a rip off! I’m putting off learning Spanish until the prices drop–dramatically. Now, if Hugo Chavez were to get into the drug biz we might see some free coke floating up this way. You know, like when he offered free heating oil to people in the US during a really cold winter? Viva Hugo! Viva Hugo!

Forget that nonsense. I don’t have to drive all the way to East LA to get some ethnic experience; I live in Winnetka which is packed wall to wall with ethnic people. I think one whole city from every Latin country has sent people to live in Winnetka and Canoga Park.

This is fucking great! White people suck, are lazy, need slaves, or illegals to work. How does a white guy work his way up? By stabbing his co-workers in the back and by being a rat, white people love to be rats, its for the public good or its for the children.

What is the Effing big deal with having signs in 2 languages? So many parts of the world have multiple languages and accommodate for them. Is it really such a bother to see another language printed besides your own?
And no one shoves Spanish down your throats. The only cartoon I can think that you may be refering to is Dora the Explorer, and it incorporates Spanish, but I dont see how it is forcing anything on anyone.

It’s not just a white thing to be multilungual. WHat about immigrants here–many want their kids to speak the native tongue and English. And White or NonWhite, I think it’s admirable for wanting yourself or your kids to speak another language, instead of living in an English only bubble.

My husband is Brazilian and his niece was doing bad in school so the teacher called him, and even though my husband was speaking English, they teacher’s like “I teach MATEMATICAS.” “Can you come in MANANA, MIERCOLES?” Dumbass doesnt even realize that Brazilians speak Portuguese, not Spanish.
Thats one reason I dont like it when white people learn Spanish. Some just then get so condescending.

i’m a honkie and i’ve successfully mastered another language, though i didnt start until high school, and know enough words on a few other languages to get by too. and i will raise my kids in a multilingual home (if i do have kids), so yes this one applies to me, except i have great pronunciation so as to avoid being that american tourist jerk and so i can get along with my mostly el salvadorian neighborhood.

Excusez-moi, mais je suis francaise. My kid is tri-lingual with spanish. we only speak french him and I. We live in Chicago, and in about 80 % of the cases I will get questions like “are we russians, polish, greek, italians, bulgarians…” anything but french. Your average white mid-western american will assume that I am polish ! then when I say I am french, invariably the answer is ” oui, oui “. There is a Lycee francais here. 75 % of the kids are americans. it costs a fortune to attend. My kid does not go there. The average american kid in his class has no clue where France is… somewhere on the otherside of the pond, LOL

my son goes to a Spanish immersion school which is our local public school. It’s a new program and we love it (we are white!). The district also offers Mandarin at two other elementary schools. I have to say, it is not just white people or Americans who want their kids there. We have Mexican kids in the Chinese program, and we also have a Dutch kid in the Spanish class, and a Polish kid in the Spanish too. These kids are all learning their 3rd language! It’s sort of a no-brainer since your kid gets the same curriculum but comes out with another language too. 40% of the parents are choosing it.

AND, I have to add, the parents who are NOT choosing it (also mostly white) hate the program and think it is ruining their school. So, not ALL white people like bilingual kids.

YES!!! I am from El Salvador and I DO love my accent!!!!!! But I also love all other LATIN AMERICAN Accents. I also dont understand why they need to learn the “SPANISH” accent. It is the driest language. All those you mentioned are lovely accents, full of flavor and fun to listen to!!! :o) I don´t understan why so many are hating on spanish!!!

you all are ignorant. this is just as racist and ignorant if i said all black people are drug dealers and eat watermelon and dont care about their schooling. give me a break and write something about world peace or something people care about.

So Funny, So True. Traveling to other countries, you get to see how dumb Americans really are. Don’t get it wrong, I’m in included, ask me how many times I was stared at for my broken French( pronouncing moi as moy) and horrendous Italian (et tu or et me?), and Irreprehensible Spanish ( say amarillo three times fast- no tongue rolling there, ), even though I took Spanish for 6 years in school and my father speaks french. Disgraceful. He He He.

All of these 5 and 6 year olds in France speak like 8 languages. What gives?!?!

First of all, this blog is not to be taken so seriously. No one ever stated there are no exceptions. Obviously it is going towards the WASPy liberal whites. This blog isnt composed of facts. It’s composed of generalizations that tend to be true, but of course are not true of 100% whites, and are not exclusive only to whites. It’s just fun to discuss them.

BTW: Spanish is not the most used language in the world.
Mandarin is the language most spoken, Hindi being 2nd.

If Americans are so interested in learning a second or third language, why did they elected a president whose English is worse than the English spoken by ALL foreign presidents regardless of their country of origin? They all seem to use a very intellectual language and always so properly used. Bush talks like someone who has just arrived from a little town in Texas! I know I would not have elected someone who NEVER learned how to prononuce the word “nuclear”. To me, that is sign of low intelligence.

This Blog is hilarious, but totally true! I myself speak German and English and I totally feel superior to other people especially when back home in the States b/c not very many people know German. Hopefully I’ll have little multilingual children too!

I got a second language while growing up, no thanks to my parents. They get the blame for moving me to South Africa at 6, where I got bombed with Afrikaans in school. Afrikaans is like a baby Dutch, which means that I can read Dutch, slowly, but the spoken language might as well be Klingon.

It doesn’t get much whiter than being a white Brit kid in South Africa: we got partly blamed for Apartheid, without actually oppressing anyone…

I am native Californian and I did my time in Spanish class, but I can affirm that Spanish doesn’t get half the status/respect reaction that French, German or even Portuguese does. Asian and African languages definitely get the “you’re a genius” reaction, though not as much cozy-up reaction.

hiflo is right about Chicago – there is so much Polish heritage there it can be overwhelming. But head on down to St. Louis and you’ll feel right at home, at least with the buildings and names, though nobody knows how to pronounce them anymore! “Creve Coeur” is pronounced “Kreeve Core”… the guy in the rental car agency at STL airport laughed his head off at me when I said it correctly in French…

Wow! I am truly amazed by the encouragement of ignorance on this page. You wonder why everyone hates WHITE America. It’s because of dumb people who think like you do. And if you are not one of those people don’t take this personally, this isn’t for you; it’s just sad that the rest of the world thinks so.
It hurts me a little bit that no one has mentioned the other reasons to learn a second or third language. Not only are you learning a language, you are learning about another culture, other people and another way of thinking and analyzing things. For example English is such a rugged and selfish language, while Spanish is sweet, romantic (hence why it is one of the romance languages…makes you say hmm huh?) and caring.
If you notice many Spanish and African descendent people are more caring towards one other. We call each other “brotha” and “sistah” whether we’re related or not. Of course we too have our ignorant ones that cause drama and give you white people a field day, but they are not the ones I am speaking about. I’m speaking about the ones like me. The ones that put fear in your hearts because we can live on both sides of the fence and be could. I can come into your community and be good, go back home to my HOOD and be good. You see we’re the ones that let you think we sold out; make you think we want to be like you, ha-ha so untrue. Sure we want our paper to stack high like you, but be like you….. NEVER
Why should we when you want to be like me? And don’t deny, just be real. You tan your skin because it’s too light. You perm your hair because it’s too straight. You get implants in your lips, hips, cheeks and butts; you do Botox because you don’t age so well. That’s right, black don’t crack! You do Viagra and pumps so you can perform better, but it doesn’t help. Oh and your music, you stole that too! The whitest music around, bluegrass isn’t even fully white, the use a banjo which is an AFRICAN instrument.
And one last thing before I allow you narrow, on- way minds to rest if you are wondering about the name, I chose it because I am the most valuable and sought after thing on the planet right now. I’m black gold for all of you who do not know Spanish.

BTW, the language your kids would learn from your Mexican nanny would probably be more like Nahuatl or something. The lower classes don’t even speak Spanish. But that would give you even better street cred! Like having a National Geographic special in your own home.

“Lycee francais here. 75 % of the kids are americans. it costs a fortune to attend. My kid does not go there.”Good news?
If Sarko and his successors hold his new promise, the lycee francais will soon be free of charge for french kids like yours…
I hope it will motivate my brother and his american wife to let my nephews learn properly french.
She must be black inside, I didn´t notice she liked to educate her kids bilingual.

I did bilingual education in Spanish in NYC for kinder/1st (we’re black btw, but my mom is into many of the the list and so am i by default lol) anyway, it was a great idea because the american kids learned spanish, the hispanic kids learned english (actually when i think about it, the hispanic kids learned spanish too! it’s amazing how many of them aren’t actually bilingulal!!) and now i get jobs that other people can’t!!

If only i were french, we could get together Erod because I’m black, but i speak spanish and portuguese, i’m moving to brazil where my “maeinha” is a french teacher! bonus points for the tagalog speaking nana, i dabble in japanese, but apparently that’s not exotic enough!! LOLOL

I think you’re neglecting Arizona too. Just about everyone (especially the under-30 crowd) speaks Spanish — at least to the extent of being able to negotiate travel and commerce.

I guess I throw off the curve a bit, as I speak 7 languages (5 proficiently and two not so much) — including French, but also including two Chinese languages, Japanese, and some (albeit not a whole lot) Arabic. At the risk of killing the mirth of an obviously tongue-in-cheek article, I have to note that it’s a personal pet-peeve that people always assume that they can’t learn a language unless they started in childhood. Simply.not.true. Does it take work? Sure, but it’s completely accomplishable by any normally-functioning adult of any age. The only advantage that childhood-learning confers is in the realm of phonology, but this is more than mitigated by adults’ higher cognitive and learning abilities…

Another things I’ve noticed my fellow white people (especially Americans) do, is that they say they can and do speak another language, most often French, when they really only have basic second language abilities. I can’t count the number of white people I’ve encountered with a couple of years of university French at most who say, “I’m fluent in French.” As a Canadian and American citizen who lived in Montreal for about four years and spoke French daily (and even studied in it for my law degree), I readily admit that I never was, and never came close, to being fluent.

I suppose my point is that white people, especially university-educated ones, often seem very very concerned about coming across as cultured because of their second-language skills, and are ready to stretch the truth or even lie about these skills to defend the status they believed they’ve achieved through a couple of language classes.

Screw White people (at least the Northern European type). We are going to exterminate them and breed them out of existance. No one gives a shit if they want their kids to be multilingual. However, if they do want them to be multilingual, tell them to learn Spanish. It will be the language of the conquerors.

what races do white Americans stem from? another thing, if you gave everybody in the world a geography test, i’m sorry to tell you, “white Americans” are the group of people that the lowest grades would belong to. also, Americans love to “think” they are worldly and cultured just for knowing French; something i find hilarious seeing as the French hate Americans…thank Bush, Miss Teen USA South Carolina, and those white Americans that think as you do…ignorant, dorito-smelling, UNeducated, UNcultured, CLOSED-minded, WHITE TRASH.

I’m a native Californian and I don’t speak a word of Spanish. I took French in high school for four years, and study Arabic now. They didn’t even offer foreign language until 9th grade were I grew up. Nearly everyone I know who speaks Spanish beyond the basics has parents or grandparents who are native Spanish speakers. Most white people in California don’t give a shit (I certainly don’t).

Rick, I agree with you–my surname is of Spanish origin, so most people assume that I speak Spanish. I love the reaction when I tell them I only know enough Spanish so that I won’t land in jail in Buenos Aires but that I speak German fluently! I know that this will sound like complete snobbery, but I think knowing German has a higher “smart factor” than French does. Something about noun declensions, perhaps…

in the french quarter (la nouvelle orleans) i used to tell my customers all the time “quand j’ habitez la sud ‘ lousiane, on parlez d’ sud d’ louisiane.” probably not written correctly, but growing up in louisiana and speaking “proper” french and cajun french, it made sense. the main problem is that we understand more written than we get spoken. sad, but true. i think if i had one more classe of “je m’appelle cynthia” i would have croaked. as it is, my nephews speak more correctly than i. but my darling husband still has some to teach them about the lessons d’escoffier as a classically trained chef than most bistros!

That is how I got into Japanese, but I started with audio tapes , then books and finally learning from Japanese people that I meet at cultural exchanges. Nowadays, that is how alot of people get into Japanese culture and alot of them never move past and anime and manga. At the most I only picked up a few words and most of what I have learnt, I learnt on my own using books and cds.

I got into Chinese becuase I love to Chinese characters, which also increased my interest in the Japanese language. Mandarin Chinese seems to be gaining popularity.

When I was kid I wanted to learn German, because my Grandfather is German. Even though my Grandmother on my my father’s side of the family is French, I never developed much of an interest in the French Language or culture.

My parents never made me study a second language, but they have always surported my interests. My Father likes to study foreign languages too and I proberly picked up that interest from him.

this is not true… at least not in Chicago. You would not believe the number of white moms that wants my boys to be friends with “timmy” and “Brady” because they can practice Spanish with them. My kids just want to play Wii.

Tha mi a tuigsinn a Ghaidhlig sin. :)
I speak Irish (though that is Scots). I learned it in immersion, in university and being an auto-didact. I am raising my kids to hopefully be bilingual, not because they might be future ambassadors to Ireland, or translators, which they can be if they want, but because I know it, it is something else I can pass on to them, and it is good for their little brains, esp. as they age. I am filing it under ‘education in general’ being a good thing. Languages are super brain stimulators.

Maybe I’m missing some common perception on white people, but why was FRENCH of all languages picked as the “Advanced” white people language? Although it is a beautiful language, why was it picked superior in white culture to all the other languages? I speak German. I personally find it very beautiful and perhaps even superior to French.

Jonathan, I think French got this reputation, because before English became the world language, French had that position fifty years ago, and before. It was the “diplomatic” language of the world. It’s also widely spoken over much of the world–in Asia, in South America (studied in school as a second language, in places like Argentina and Brazil), in Africa, and throughout the Middle East. I don’t think it’s superior, but because “cultured” people studied it and spoke it, it just hasn’t lost that reputation yet. It’s also the only language besides English that the U.S. government will accept foreign documents in. For example, when I got married in Morocco, the American Embasssy can accept documents in only English or French, but refuses to accept Spanish!

I agree with Adam and Carl. Mandarin Chinese is the lingua franca of the day… Spanish is right behind it. I speak some Chinese and still learning it along with Spanish. Also, I am presently living in Hong Kong where it is culturally diverse and fast paced. So, I have some advantage in learning Chinese.

Spanish is right behind it? Ethnologue and Encarta estimates have Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu) and English right behind Mandarin Chinese. Spanish is ranked 4th.

I think setting the language you want to learn based on the number of its native speakers is retarded anyway. I learn Russian and French, but it’s very unlikely that I’ll really ever use Russian that much. French is more common, but still not all that useful unless I go to Europe. I’d say that you should just learn whichever language you’d like to.

I am from England therefore I speak English. Rugged, selfish English. Apparently, I’m ignorant of other cultures and also uncaring. Although, I don’t care if people get plastic surgery as it is none of my business. Thank you for pointing out how inferior I am to you and how you are the most sought after thing on the planet. I had no idea I was so ignorant. Foolishly, I thought people were just people regardless of race, culture, religion, sex and sexual preferances. I apologise, if I came across rugged and selfish, but what can you expect of someone who only speaks one language.

In California there is a law that makes it illegal for a public school teacher to speak Spanish to a student anyplace but in a Spanish class. I was a bilingual teacher and I had to retire, rather than comply with that disgusting law. You can tell I’m still rather bitter. In any event, I would say that being bilingual in any language other than Spanish is considered a plus to most white people. To speak Spanish, however, is seen as de classé.

There may be some well-meaning people who have somehow come to believe that English-only education is a kindness but they are wrong. English-only education is cruel, short-sighted and downright STUPID.

Spanish is great! What else do the staff speak? I had some Haitians but their French was just crazy! I think my private school had a little bit more of a clue about French than your forebears Mademoiselle!

It’s pretty ignorant and judgemental to make a comment about the omitions in Spanish spoken in different countries. Don’t call it a habit. The Spanish language developed differently in every country colonized. That’s why each country has its own accent/”bad habits”/regional differences.

So Tecolote, why do you say people should not say they’ve been somewhere or their grandmother was born somewhere? Why wouldn’t anyone believe it? And who cares if no one believes it, this is just a website comment forum!

And yeah, Spencer spells Buenos Aires incorrectly and goes on to say a bunch of stuff about Argentina without getting to a point. What was your point, Spencer?

Who said you could ONLY be American? Some people are “foreigners” by birth and then acquire American citizenship as children, through their naturalized parents, thus don’t have to renounce previous citizenships.

You call people you don’t want voting here “foreigners” but if the U.S. gave them citizenship, then shut your damn mouth!

Cool. So when the first soon-to-be-elected-then-shot black presidental candidate gets on TV and chastizes the American public for only knowing one language, he’s thinking like his white mother? Right. Black people already know a second language: Ebonics.

Easy. So when the child gets older they can translate for the parents. They don’t even have to do it, they can get a tutor. Mexican born parents do that to their children ALL the time. They wanna come here for a better life but they’re too lazy to learn the language properly so they come here anyway, breed, send the kids to American schools so they’ll learn english while their brains are still sponges and when they come home they converse in spanish so when they’re older they’ll be billingual and get better jobs. Messed up, huh? But its pretty smart when you think about it.

Oh yeah. With Russian, Chinese, and Arabic? You’ll get a awesome paying and exciting job with the FBI, CIA, the U.N., etc. Those are the languages that really matter in this age we live in. Learn French only if you wanna live in France cause you are not gonna use it in the U.S., Learn Spanish if you plan on moving to the southern west coast (which is what I am doing) and Texas. I still want to learn either Russian, Japanese of Mandarin.

Here in GA you HAVE to have some experience (2 full credits) in a second language or you will not graduate. I think its because our population of Hispanics is increasing to almost the same amount as southern CA

Your day’s never over,
Your work’s never through!
Though you’ve tamed most of the heathen and the barbarians too!
‘Massa, thanks for ‘lectricity and the (Ah So!) internet too!
WHITEMAN, THE WHOLE WORLD’S DEPENDING ON YOU!

They tried to say that ‘you can’t jump’.
But, you made it to the moon without having to dunk.
You might not have much rhythm,
But you can (steal) carry a good tune,
WHITEMAN, THE WHOLE WORLD’S DEPENDING ON YOU!

You made it through civil rights and women’s lib too,
You’ve been through a lot, good buddy, no wonder you can sing the blues!
If the world’d open their eyes, they’d see that in the past you’re not really stuck,
Even though you still fly a rebel flag, at least it’s on a Japanese pickup truck!

Black may be beautiful, and tan may be grand,
But white’s still the color of the BIG BOSS MAN!
’Ask not’ (J.F.K.) whether it’s true,
WHITEMAN, THE WHOLE WORLD’S DEPENDING ON YOU!

The world doesn’t understand your level of stress,
Every minute’s a Malox moment, but that’s the price of success!
You watch your laptop for the first sign of loss,
Well, it’s time you paid the cost to be the boss!
Don’t drop the ball now and lose the home court advantage,
Or we’ll all have to say the pledge of allegiance in Spanish!(‘Press Uno for English’)
Only you can straighten out the world’s condition,
‘Cause you were properly conceived in the missionary position!
Stand up like a white man and do your white duty,
Or we’ll all be blown to hell by sheik your booty!
ASK NOT whether, Hillary or Obama can rule,
WHITE MAN, THE WHOLE WORLD’S DEPENDING ON YOU!

We have language laws in Canada. You have to take French from grades 4 to 9 or you’re not allowed to graduate high school. Seriously. It’s even more hardcore in Quebec. The signs must be in both languages, French must be bigger and it must be on top. Even here in Ontario everything is English and French.

That’s inaccurate. Although Spanish is by no means universally spoken in Mexico, it is spoken by the vast majority in every income group.

Speakers of indigenous languages do tend to be poorer, but they are not the majority of Mexican poor. Nearly all urban Mexican poor speak Spanish. It is the rural poor and the urbanized rural poor who may speak Maya, Nahuatl, Mixtec, Zapotec, Otomi, Totonac, Mazatec, etc.

Only 6% of Mexicans speak an indigenous language, while about 20% live in extreme poverty. Even if we were to assume that all of the speakers of indigenous languages are in extreme poverty, they still form less than half of all extremely impoverished Mexicans. Remember, too, that one must usually have at least basic means to be able to afford to emigrate.

Agreed. What about the fact that when combined, Spanish-speaking nations’ combined GDP is nearly 5 trillion dollars. If they were a single nation, they would have the third-largest economy in the world. Latin America is also one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, right up there with China and India. However, unlike China or India, where businesspeople often speak English, this is not always the case in Latin America, where it is known in international business that you cannot do business without knowing Spanish.

There are plenty of good reasons to learn Spanish, including competitiveness in the global market.

Why is it, then, that the only reasons I hear other people say for learning the language is because “We live in Arizona and it’s practical here”? Yes, it’s nice being able to talk to your neighbors, but Spanish is so much more than just that.

oh. my. goodness. This sentence right here describes my father perfectly- “They dream about the children drifting in between French and English sentences as they bustle about the kitchen while they read the New York Times and listen to Jazz.” My father loves jazz (is a former jazz musician), loves the New York Times, and is so happy that my little brother is learning French in school. Hilarious!

Well, I would not say it’s “hardcore” in Quebec, I would say it’s normal. There is about 7 millions people in Quebec, and most of them speak French. And more, french people in Canada are surrounded by english language, so it’s normal for them to have laws to protect their language.

She’s English and lives in Paris, and her kid’s dad is French. It’d be hard for the kid NOT to pick it up…and she’s not exactly your average social-climbing American (which is who the ‘white people’ of the blog’s title really are..

Mary, your comment of July 29 made me laugh. Hilariuos, because I remember a friend who’s parents were true WASPs from New Hampshire and that describes them perfectly. they thought they were so hip with old records of Mirielle Mathieu and Jacque Brel and paying for French lessons. So basically, this Scots-English family was going around the house trying to speak to each other in French. Of course, they were in the middle of south Texas, but they never got the memo that we speak Spanish and English,not french and English.

white kids should learn latin, first… then english, then every other latin based laguage… even if they suck at english knowing latin will let you communicate with almost anyone, as long as you can think too.

White people also like to have their infants and toddlers learn sign language so parents can communicate with their kids before they learn to speak.
That way they can claim their children are “advanced.” Having an “advanced” child is better than working for a nonprofit, but not quite as good as having an advanced degree in some obscure field. ;+)

French might seem to impress as a cultural thing. In reality Spanish, Mandarin, Hindi and Arabic are far more useful in today’s World. Even though French is widely spoken in Africa.http://www.poeticmotherlover.com

“Um No”, you are an example of why people from other nations view the U.S. as one of the most ignorant countries in the world. Diplomatically the United States needs to start making a bigger effort to bridge the gap between Islamic countries and the West, or we’re only going to see the continued proliferation of terrorism and extremism in these countries.

“Um No”, you are an example of why people from other nations view the U.S. as one of the most ignorant countries in the world. Diplomatically the United States needs to start making a bigger effort to bridge the gap between Islamic countries and the West, or we’re only going to see the continued proliferation of terrorism and extremism in these countries. One way to do this would be to make more of an effort and learn their language. It’d be a start at least.

English is not a Latin based language. English is a Germanic (or Teutonic) language, part of the Indo-European Language group. 70% of English vocabulary is based on French, due to the centuries of the French and English sharing and warring over territory. However, due to the influx of people from all over the world, the English Language in America over the last century has evolved into almost it’s own language. Furthermore, the constant re-invention and invigoration of African Americans has helped make English a crucial and universal language.
Expecting someone to learn Latin to understand English is a misleading concept. A better suggestion might be to say that learrning any new language helps you understand your own native tongue, which is the case.

It’s absolutely amazing. We’ve got everyone in the world, a giant plethora of ignorance and I didn’t have the heart to dig through it all to find something worth reading.

Truth is, speak what you want where you want to, the spanish like to think they are conquering america because they are… moving here? Because they won’t better their own countries :P

That’s fine. We’ve got plenty room.

The blacks want to think they are important, which I understand, it’s cute. You’ve got that whole we were abused (Not we actually a few of your ancestors, and I do mean a FEW) by being bought and forced into slavery.

Funny :P yeno since none of you know anything of slavery yet you still like to ride that horse dontcha?

And then we’ve got ignorant whites, chanting USA and making out with their sisters, filling the role of the ignorant jock in the group. That’s dandy too.

I’ll go ahead and just break some things done for you all.

America is for everyone, regardless of any sort of status you may have be it racial, social, sexual, whatever. It will always be for everyone. If any one type of people tries to take over, or take too much, the others will keep them in check. For those of you who don’t understand, if the hispanics get too pushy and try to claim “conquerers”, well then the whites will kill them. Alot of them, you can say street cred, thug life all you want. They’ve got alot of firepower and standing. And if the blacks try to do anything it will just be the same, and the same goes for the whites. You all will keep each other in check. It’ll be cute though the day one of the idiot races pushes the other races too far

I hope I’m somewhere safe when it all happens.

Maybe you’ll all just kill each other off :) and we can be done with the drama.

White people (American white, or course) have the luxury of only being obligated to know English. I really could give a damn if my kids learn Spanish or Cantonese. Teaching a kid another language is almost like raising another child in entirety. I know it’s important to my culture: I have to teach my kids about black slavery, cuban communism, and chinese new year! damn, it’s too just much work.

When I have those bad boys, I just pray their dad is Brazilian so I knock a few of these out in one shot.

Ironically, my parents enrolled me in Mandarin classes before they started me on German, French and Spanish in that order. With my sister they also attempted to add Italian into the mix, but by this point I was no longer being homeschooled and didn’t have to deal with their clumsy attempts at language instruction.

I don’t see the problem with bilingualism. To say its a “white” thing, I don’t necessarily agree with. The world is globalizing, and more and more cultures and interacting with each other. Therefore, communication between multiple cultures is key.

lol..this is way too funny, and from my experiance living in a “gentrified, mulit-lingual community” I have to agree. I wonder however, why is it that white folk, would deem any other second language aside from french, or chinese, not as chic or cool? The Latino population seems to outnumber many other immigrant populations, so why not be gung ho about speaking spanish? Perhaps there is some sort of pervasive prejudice that exists.

I totally agree……………… I’m a third generation non-residential Indian living in a former colony of the British Empire and due to my heritage, speak four languages….. and Hindi is one of them……. which is very important in the modern world since almost a sixth of the planet’s population speak Hindi of some form or another.

Why do all white people assume that anyone who speaks Arabic is automatically a terrorist? Someone who even looks Arab makes people nervous at places like airports and sidewalk cafes………. I’ve heard of incidences where Punjabis got mistaken for Arabs just because of their beards…… it’s getting crazier by the day!!!

My dad so wanted us to learn another language when we were little… We had “See it and Say it in Spanish” – yes Daddy wanted us to learn Spanish… and my bnrother and I, having moved to a 2nd world country (Israel) are now bilingual Eng-Heb…

I grew up trilingual (English-French-Danish), and by the time I was 10 I also spoke fluent Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese. Guess what. I only use English. And I don’t even live in an English-speaking country, but in one where I’m fluent in the local language (and dialect). But it does help to know several languages; I got some jobs I was unqualified for / for which I lacked the necessary experience.

BTW, I wasn’t considered a “gifted” child, just an adaptable one. I’m white, but not American. Maybe this site should be called “what American upper-middle-class / hipster wannabes like.” So as to eliminate the confusion for us caucasians who do these things without bragging about them.

Then too is the issue of wanting to recreate the depth of cultural heritage you never had growing up.

That is definately true that white women (college educated at least) do become more attracted to you when they find out you speak another language. Try impressing a Latina by saying that you speak Spanish or Portugese, not gonna happen.

This book is definately written for and about Middle to Upper Class WASPS who are college educated and consider themselves liberal.

I agree. I am not not white (Neither am I American), but I’ve lived in two different continents, (North) America and Europe. I know that what is pretty much said about white people on this blog, to a lot of extend, does not reflect Europeans even some Americans. So, it really bothers me if the whole subject talked about on the blog generalizes what ‘white people’ do. It’s not always true.

I grew up in a house where my father could speak both Portuguese and Spanish and still, I only speak English. I’ll never forgive him for it. Oh, shit, I forgot that I’m not completely white. I always do that

Speaking another language at home is basically just a pain in the ass. Plus, you will spend your entire school career explaining your name to people. Then you’ll graduate and have to explain it to your co-workers. Who will ask what it means. Yes, that is my real name in the box, in it’s origianal spelling. I use an Anglicized spelling for my legal name.

…Also, I speak an Asian language– which is actually good for employment if you’re a fluent English speaker as well. Heh. I wonder if I can somehow cash in on the desire of white people to reach “expert level” by having their young’uns speaking Japanese…

maybe a secondary post to this would be “Different-colored boyfriends.”

“All white teenage girls have a dream of dating or marrying someone who is of a different race than them. This encompasses all races, but especially latinos. They always moan to their friends about how they aren’t attracted to white guys, and want to marry a latino so that their kids will be able to speak in Spanish and spend months at a time in ‘their father’s country.’ When faced with a white person blithering on about how white guys are so selfish, it is always good to nod your head and say something like ‘Latinos? I’ve always liked Asian guys.’ This is something you’d only say if you truly want to be accepted into the white girl sub-culture. But if you’re really going for gold, talk about your ex-boyfriend Jorge/Julio/Juan, who was such a great guy and you don’t understand why you broke up with him. Only say this if you want to answer questions about Jorge/Julio/Juan, going into detail mostly about the break-up. This is a common white girl tactic used so that they can learn from other peoples’ mistakes instead of their own.”

Im white/nativeamerican and i also talk in espanol ,last year i did snorted cocaine and painkillers in spanish class bhind my stupid ass teacher and i got the highest grade but i have to have two languages for college and i also know some german and senca and a little latin and its fun swearing at people in german

I’m Hispanic and I’ve been living here for 26 years. I learned French and Portuguese in college, and I speak both of them fluently, I picked up a little Japanese while serving in the military, (Spanish and English too, by the way). And It feels GREAT to see startled faces of people that are talking in another language and then you talk to talk to them in that language.

Hmmm… I studied French and now I work with African Union soldiers in, yes, Africa. Is this what white people are supposed to do? Or did I fall short…maybe I should be working for the UN in Geneva. No one told me. Geez, I even speak some Wolof too. Sometimes we call it Frolof. My Senegalese friends love that. Check me out at my blog…
oh geez, it does hit home though… we recently signed my kids up for French language classes at the Alliance Francaise in DC.

I don’t see how these numbers can be correct- the US has a population of 300,000,000, who mostly speak English, plus England, Australia, and all the educated people (like Indians) who speak English as well. What is your source for these numbers?

There are way more French speakers than this list credits: 60 million in France, 20 million Cote d’Ivoire, 8 million Benin, 9 million Canada, add to this list places like Lebanon, Morocco, much of northern and sub-saharan Africa, Belgium and Switzerland, French is well over 100 million.

Yes but if you read the article carefully. Spanish is really not a foreign language. It is the language of Help, Janitors, Maids, Nannies, Illegal Aliens, Construction workers…etc. Therefore there is no glamour whatsoever on Spanish.
White people have figured that out and do not desire learning Spanish unless religion is involved and they are called to go civilize “savages” in South America.

Well ..the point is widely-spoken languages in the world do not make them necessarily attractive in the US or Canada. Remember white people aspire to being 1st, unique, pioneering…so learning Mandarin or Arabic however challenging it is…doesn’t earn you any cred with Whites. Look no further than romanticized White European languages, French and Italian. German to a lesser extent. Many Whites still are uneasy about German stuff.

That’s very ignorant of you BitterPill. Everyone European language spoken in these non-European lands is a foreign language, irregardless as to whether or not it is English, Spanish, French, Italian, or German.

The point of studying French is at the heart of what WPs adore. French is not particularly useful except when reading Peter Mayle books, or pronouncing French artists, foods, luxury brands correctly. Therefore WPs get a kick about studying a language to basically discuss l’art, le jazz/le hip-hop and l’Afrique.

This is so so on the mark…i speak italian to my daughter because i want that she learns it well as a child, hopefully even better than i did.

It is funny, the people who tell me the most “you HAVE to teach her italian” are the few people I know who are actually from italy. Italians seem the most proud when they know people from other countries know how to speak their language.

I know I’m feeding the troll, but just in case this really is some ignorant dumbfuck… haha, how incredibly ignorant. Get your continents right, you’re obviously referring to the illegals who (unfortunately) come here because their situation is so dire in their home countries of Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, etc. South America generally has wealthier people (minus Bolivia)… not everything south of the border is “South America” or “Mexico.”

White people love making generalizations because it makes them feel more secure about the “uncivilized world” around them.

Ironically this article refers to US English speakers as “white.” And also refers to almost all languages beside English as non-white. References to French, German, and yes even Spanish are all European languages in which the population of the countries are white (yes European Spaniards are WHITE).

Native English speakers in the US should not feel “guilty” for not being multi-lingual. It is very elitist to think that because European’s tend to be multi-lingual, we and/or our children are less accomplished.

European’s HAVE to be multilingual because they exist in a geography that is smaller than a gathering of US states. The chose to not share common boarders, language and values and it stunted the success of individual countries. Could you imagine if the people of Illinois spoke one language, Hoosiers spoke a different language, Hawkeyes spoek another, and so on…what a complicated country we would live in.

Notice how they realized the value of borders, language and values in forming the European union…which has been very painful for them.

This is why the push for English as the “official” language of the US is NOT racist. It is common sense and essential for the future of our country.

If do encourage parents to have their children learn more than one language, but they should not do it out of guilt. There should be a reason behind it…cultural connected (your family heritage) or to give an advantage in business. There are only a few common languages that the world communicates in…first is English. This tends to be the common language of business, engineering, aviation, governments etc. So being a native English speaker gives you a leg up on your foreign competition. Choosing a 2nd language outside heritage, should be based on future competitive advantage for your child and be based on economic trends and where you live. In the US, with the increase of the Latino community, Spanish would be the language I recommend unless you plan on doing business or living in Asia or Europe.

Leveraging the diversity of our individual cultures in COMMON borders, values and yes LANGUAGE (i.e. English) will not divide our country but only give us STRENGTH!

this blog seriously irks me, its promoting stereotypes completly! i have only been browsing the pages to see if one thing isnot promoting them. its like you want the two races to be seperated

and are you trying to say a black person has never wanted or liked any of the things you talk about? are you saying every white person is like that? where do hispanics or asians stand in your mind? are they grouped into the whites? you make it out that every white person is a racist who wants to be seen as non racist! why does everything need to be about race? why cant it be things people like?

in your blog about white people like to have black friends just becuase they’re black is just as bad? why cant you like people for people? if a person is nice and funny and smart and they are black, they would be the same funny smart and nice white person. if you are a stupid mean and rude black person, they would still be that same person if they were white and so would any other races as well

and just because maybe people grow up diffrent does not mean anything becuase people can always decide and choose who they wish to be

ummmm I think its supposed to be a joke. Maybe you should try getting a sense of humour, regardless of what ethnicity you are. Reading too much into jokes is the real problem here, not mocking some common stereotypes we have all encountered.

Now really this is soooooo american. Y’all here mix up “white people” and “american white people”…
I live in Switzerland where the country is divided in three major zones, in the bigger one people speak german, in the second, people speak french (like me) and in the smallest people speak Italian. We learn at least two of those languages at school and english on top of it for everyone, plus latin for me because I made old school type of studies… So really… I dunno what y’all talking about here.

Honestly, I think you’ve missed the point. The site is not a critique of all white people, but instead more specifically about self-absorbed upper-class left-wing people (which lets face it, is more often than not, white people).

The author of this site is canadian and I’m sure he understands bilingual situations. In Canada we have both french and english as official languages and are generally taught both in school, a bit like in Switzerland.

Haha! I don’t speak French (I hate the prissy sound of it), but I speak English, Japanese, Chinese, and German, with a bit of Spanish thrown in so I can live in California or have gardening done. It looks like I’ve got most of my bases covered.

The more I read these blogs, the more I worry if I’m really black or not… I guess I have to blame it on being a second gen immigrant from a country whose ideal future includes everything U.S. while at the same time excluding everything U.S. and being only halfway bilingual (can understand but can’t speak) because, in the exact words of my childhood self, “no one from school speaks that language”

yes, Michele, it is completely about stereotypes, ones about the group the author belongs to- mid to upper class liberal whites , generally urban and mostly secular.
Many whites will not fit the stereotype and any other group that wants to do so is welcome to. But there is a grain of truth to it,

wow! you’re underthinking it and overthinking it at the same time! nice job. YES, it is about stereotypes. that is the basis for the satire. without it- no funny. please see my website, http://www.subtextforbeginners.com

i disagree with the notion that Spanish is a poor substitute for other, snootier second languages. how else are you going to become an elite pseudo-multi-cultural politician, or eradicate the drug-infested ghettos of Spanish Harlem to build conscientious liberal white street cred?

“no exception”? Hmmm.. you should change the title to stuff some urban liberal white people like. The majority of white Americans (don’t know about Canadians) are quite opposed to this idea. They want everyone to learn English. French is considered by most white people especially taboo and extremely anti-Amercan! Overall, white Americans don’t fit in well in the Lycee environment. Except perhaps in NY? I can not speak for all situations. And, the liberal “white people” I know line up for days to send their children to public bilingual Spanish/English schools. Now, Chinese? That’s another issue.

you are a moron, you have no idea what white people want. Where are you getting this ridiculous information from? I am white and believe if you live in thIS country you should speak English. What purpose does learning another language serve? Oh that’s right ALL white people feel more distinguished when speaking another language. Maybe uptight, spoiled, egotistical, asanine white people. As for the normal white people who you obviously never interview…..ENGLISH IS THE ONLY LANGUAGE YOU NEED TO SPEAK

This is a comedic thing, first of all. Second of all, think of all the stupid stereotypes white people (I’m white, so be quiet) have had in general and used to keep minorities from: jobs, equal rights, and in extreme cases life.

So, I think I speak for everyone who understands this is comedy: Shut the fuck up, go back to hitting your wife / being hit by your alcoholic husband.

LOL! My boss kept complaining to me how he wished his housekeeper would speak Spanish to the children so they too can learn the language. He insisted she do it and the housekeeper insisted on speaking to the children in Spanish.

funny, how this idiot knows so much about “whites”! how many people in europe grow up bilingual! welshmen, irishmen, brittanic, basque people, swiss, belgians, catalans, and of course allmost all europeans except englishmen talk english as a second language!

Relatedly, white people LOVE using random French phrases to end their thoughts, paragraphs, comments, a la Conan Doyle in Sherlock Holmes stories.

A caveat here, however, is that the spelling must be accurate. White people will go to great lengths (e.g., looking the phrase up in an online dictionary) to ensure accuracy, even with such over-used phrases as “viola!” and “touche!” (don’t forget the accent marks!).

Don’t get me started on white people (I am one) and their multiracial love children. Why is it that white people feel they are doing something inherently “right” by adopting a child/ children of a different race or nationality?

Also, interracial/ international adoption is not open to all white people, meaning, your average white person/ couple can’t pull it off. I, for example, would be laughed out of my family. My sister, however, would make an excellent candidate.

To that end, here’s a list of requirements of the white person in interracial/ international adoptions, as influenced by that sister of mine and developed (initially as a joke) by me and my mother:

1. The white person/ couple must be liberal in their politics. No exceptions.

2. They must live in an old house located in an area undergoing “urban revitalization.”

Haha this is so true!
A chinese friend of mine recently stumbled upon a chance at free accomodation with some rich white couple who wanted their two year old daughter to learn chinese the most authentic way – with a native speaker. He lived there for a few weeks on the condition that he speak in chinese like 30 hrs / wk and bring chinese-speaking friends over…i think it just got to the point where it was too weird tho. Also, im pretty sure he was trying to convince the child he was really the father.

Pretty weird that the family was willing to let some random middle aged, bearded chinese guy into their home just for speaking chinese

People…please! Everyone gets so bent out of shape on this site. Isn’t there a post about “being offended”? Almost every post features someone getting defensive or freaking out because they’ve been outed. A little self-awareness, a little self-deprecation…failing those, just claim you’re doing everything listed on this site ironically.

That’s bollocks. Most Europeans don’t speak English, the majority (as in pretty much every country in the rest of the world) will only speak their own language. True, you meet a lot of people in northern European countries who can speak English, but but it’s definitely not ‘almost all’ of them, and certainly not true in the rest of Europe. Try speaking to the average person in Italy or Bulgaria and you’ll be met with a blank stare. Also, most Irish people speak English as a first language, only learning gaeilga in school. The people who speak Irish as a first language tend to live in the country, especially on the West Coast.

most asians want to be bilingual too. its only black people (who I assume run this site) that think its a bad thing. they just think education in general is a stupid waste of time and money. “education is something pc liberal whites made up to help fill a void in their lives.” lol, yes a black guy said that to me. I could care less what agenda blacks have aginst whites, but when they start buring down korean hair shops for trying to make a living and opening in “their” neigborhoods, it just shows how much they adore the thug culture and being stupid. I’m just so glad my family (koreans) have decided to not do bussiness in high black populated areas.

Rats, Mark…fail! My boyfriend is adopted and Korean, and his parents are none of the above. They are conservatives, live in the suburbs, and drive a legitimate minivan. Hmmm…perhaps in the 80s, adoption was embraced by different white people. :)

i was forced to learn spanish as a toddler and have had french since 4th grade. i still get compliments from “the crowd”; they see a well rounded white kid who knows 3 languages fluently. my friend ryan’s mom always admires my well roundedness and hates herself for not forcing her son to learn useless languages

I WANT A MILLION DOLLARS!!! Can one million RICH WHITE PEOPLE send me one dollar apiece, puh-lease????

I don’t want money from any Asians, or Blacks or Hispanics. You guys NEED your money. I only want one dollar apiece from RICH WHITE PEOPLE who seem to WASTE their money on things like multilingual lessons for children.

Waste it on me instead. Thanks so much! (First person who comments “You ARE a waste.” is a rotten egg. You thought it. I know you did. Stop lying. See? I knew it.)

I’m part White and part Hispanic. I am TOTALLY HATING those that said Spanish is a poor substitute or only for the working class. Spanish is a Romance language and when spoken correctly it sounds beautiful. IGNORANT IDIOTS!!!

yeah i mean basically this is just the result of historical circumstance….If you are a native English speaker in an English speaking country (ie. England, Australia, US) then you do not typically speak another language because English is the global business language. People who are “multilingual” – typically are from non-English speaking countries, – in other words they speak their language, and learn English in school. All the other cases of “multilingualism” are generally exceptions due to (again) specific situational circumstances, like immigration, employment abroad, etc.

Nothing as sad as an American TRYING to speak french (or any other language except spanish maybe)

They fail at any attemt and only make a fool out of them and their culture!

Don’t try to copy the Europeans who are multiligual.

I for example, am raised in dutch, then french, then english, then german, then spanish and now urdu.

Americans don’t have the habit of learning another language because they are so selfcentered and NOW they want to learn it because it’s ‘cool’ and ‘sophisticated’ and ‘alternative’
probably they put a Apple’s sticker on their languagebooks…

You’re kind of generalizing a whole race, as is this whole site, but its ok, dont worry, im not flipping out over it.

i just want you to know you’re not completely accurate with your statement. not ALL Americans try to learn another language “because its cool”, some, maybe, i guess, but me on the other hand, i taught myself some German, learned some Arabic and Dutch from friends, and even went to school for American Sign Language.

you think i’d go through all that trouble because its cool? no.

also, not all Americans are self centered. now i can only assume you are ignorant…

Given that Latin is the true romance language, that encompasses Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian and many others. I got laughed at for trying to learn a “dead” language, but i learned all the derivatives of it in really short times.

you are ridiculous. If every state in the U.S. spoke a different language (ie Europe) than we would all learn 2-3 languages growing up. As it is, if you have a general grasp of spanish, you can roam two continents and not have a problem.

It’s not that we’re inferior because we don’t learn it. It’s that we don’t have any f*cking use for it.

I don’t have any kids, but if I do have some I want them to be multi-lingual, I grew up in Ireland and only speak a little Gaelic, which I regret, would love to inflict gaelic on my kids, also, french, spanish, italian, chiniese, greek and any other I can, I have friends of all sorts of descent, my plan is to have them babysit as often as possible and get them to speak thier native language around my kids all the time, thus forcing them to learn! I know, I know, I’m so white right now!

Don’t sweat it, they’re white, most ignorant, and well…accept the fact that us Hispanics and our language are…let’s just say, not considered “awesome” because we are the largest minority in the US of A and “take up jobs and don’t pay taxes” that’s why Spanish is considered a poor alternative…we have a bad rep in this country and White ignorance supports that bad rep by ripping on us for migrating here in the first place.

I’m black and I think people are really bogus when they say those things. those people are just ignorant. They always give people who are not white a bad rep. What you said about hispanics which is so unfair and what they say about blacks they need to suck it up about slavery and we are all druggies and idiots and asians. its so uncool really when is this going to stop?

I get a kick of how many people responding fall right into this category. He’s poking fun of the upper middle class whites who try so hard to be cultured due to their shame of being white and successful. This is a sin in America nowadays.

Multilingualism is a good skill to emigrate out of America when the economy continues to collapse, where English is not the business language and by the way things are goin with multiculturalism or diversity, your kids must learn 5 or 6 languages to get by in New York, Los Angeles and Miami. +

White people like…to be “Irish” speak Gaelic and listen to new age retro-neo-quasio-psuedo-Irish rock music from Enya to the Coors to Eurythmetics. If you wanna be Irish to the max, convert to Roman Catholicism, drink Guinness beer and go live in the green rural hell known as Kerry or Galway, where most of the Irish left from to America. +

The best way a child can be multilingual is have one or two parents (and in some cases, grandparents from another country), my father is from France whose hometown faces the Flemish-speaking region of Flandre near the Belgian border, and my part-Cherokee/Osage Indian mother from the Los Angeles area where many Hispanics, Asians and southern Europeans lived by the pier of Redondo Beach, now taken over by blond, blue-eyed, beach-going whites with a deep suntan. +

Tell that to the blogger who has an “allergy” to the black race or “melanin intolerance” to the slightest bronze skin, the Hispanic population in the US is actually bilingual and not “refusing” to learn/adapt English in a world where tele communications and media has tons of American English slang words. Puerto Rico was under the U.S. flag since 1899 and millions of Puerto Ricans live in the mainland U.S. where English is a must to learn and acquire as Americans.

I also find interesting yet true Japan, China, most of east Asia and the whole “UN”, school children are required and encouraged to learn a second language (esp. English) to get an academic college admission or in a highly-paid career profession. The Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and Mongolia has 3 languages to learn: whether it is Dutch, French, German, Russian, Portuguese, Spanish or Italian. It’s the legacy of European colonialism in east Asia. +

Whenever the blogger dies and so will his race become extinct by the year 2059. He even wrote about emigrating to either Canada, Sweden or New Zealand, although he’ll love being in China (hypercapitalism & extreme socialism), Brazil (very cheap & under-developed interior) and South Africa (white European elite rule in the “dark continent”). +

The Roman Catholic church used to have Latin rite mass to unite multiple language-speaking followers before Vatican II in 1966 abandoned the Latin rite mass. My Dad was raised Catholic and was concerned on English, Spanish, French-Canadian and Dutch-Fleming speaking masses are dividing the church into new ones, it can become schisms. +

Coming soon entry #128: Teach Ebonics in public schools to help Africans get ahead. :-/ Why not allow the Indian tribal school students on the reservations learn and freely speak indigenous languages? Or Jewish schools must use Hebrew (one of two official langauges in Israel with Arabic) or even Yiddish, a nearly-extinct Judeo-European language once known for its’ artistic literature, music and oral tales? +

What to do if the white people never learned a second language? We’ll be put in a room, get yelled at, hit by rulers and have a “scientist” claim our brains are inferior, therefore we must learn this other language or in the words of the Doctor who robot “exterminate them”. But let’s use a kinder, gentler word from Dr. Picard of Star Trek after being assimilated into the Borg: “Resistance is futile.”

The same kind of people moan, gripe and b*tch about the corporate rich got “everything” like money, privilege and prestige, and they act morally proper all the friggin time like an ultra-strict “clean” or “educated” speech code or uber-moralistic perfectionist conformity. They are urban, more like gentrified urban cores with second homes in exurban resort towns and one more home in the “urban-blight free” small towns the elite preachs about is great: i.e. Stowe, Vermont. +

I wanna speak “Valley-speak” like, totally, for sure, like any Southern Californian from the “Valley” (mainly the San Fernando) or the OC (Orange county). I learned to mimic the southern drawl, okie twang or Texan honky-tonk by being around relatives on Mom’s side in Tulsa, Oklahoma. My mom’s grandmother who was full-blooded Cherokee with Osage or shawnee mixed in spoke Tsa-La-Gie and wrote in the tribal sylabary. I know like 5 words from the Cherokee language, in which I admit can’t speak much of.

The top 5 television stations in most US major cities are now in Spanish anyway: Channel 21 Miami, 47 New York and 34 Los Angeles are examples of the highest TV ratings in each market area. The Palm Springs and El Centro/Yuma areas in southern Cal. are about half or 60% Hispanic, therefore channels 3 (XHBC) and 15 (KUNA) will make the 3 major networks unable to compete, plus FOX (KECY 9 has bilingual programs, and commercials), several UHF low-power channels and the SAP button on remote controls. +

During World War I, anti-German patriotic hysteria when we fought Germany and Austria the first time (yes, this is true), everything German was shunned, abandoned or renamed in English. The US government feared there were over 10 million German-Americans who spoke some German among themselves for 300 years. Pennsylvania had a “bilingual” cultural character until the 1940’s, and the local Amish or Mennonites preserved prayes and church services in Old High German to some extent. Then with World War II, the German ethnic communities further shied away with the “mother country” and the cold war thing when any Germans are “East German” or “Nazi sympathizer” spies. Oddly, over half of white Americans have ethnic German ancestry and only 1 million Americans know some German, except now the entire community are English dominant. +

Spanish is the most common language in the western hemisphere, followed by English…and remember tourists going to Brazil: the dominant language there is Portuguese. Also Brazil along with Argentina, Uruguay and to some extent Chile has alot of descendants of German, Italian, British and French people. It’s more like a miniature Europe transplanted by immigrants invited to settle new villages and communities across South America over a century ago. +

South Africa is English-speaking, but the majority of whites are Afrikaaners who speak a form of Dutch-German with French Huegenot words or phrases: Afrikaans, the word stands for “African” of course. The people are known as the “white tribe” who lived in southern Africa for nearly 500 years, and have a strong sense of ethnic nationalism. +

I try to flirt with WHITE RICH AMERICAN girls by saying:
1. I’m half-French, 2. I have some American Indian in me & 3. I collect checks in the mail…don’t need to work for them.
J/K, the worst pick-up lines, esp. 2 and 3 are dangerous, but what about the “Le gens/peuple romantique” one, yea? non? +

No way, the whitest people live in the hills of the deep South or any mountain range, inland valley or landlocked state. The hipsters say they are Irish, Jewish or Polish to indicate “we have heritage”, but appearedly don’t know much about their own family history. Heck, I have German and Scottish as well, but in a race-conscious country like America and the fact I never been in touch with Germany or Scotland for 400 years, I just identify as an American of both white/French with Amerindian or “person of color”. However, I’m not French first and don’t want to be called a “person of color”. +

Now what about “Spanglish” the main language in barrios across the country? Mexican-Americans in the southwest started the dialect of mixed English, Spanish and Aztecan words. This is an ethnic group lived in the region in some cases 500 years (i.e. south Texas, northern New Mexico or the California coastline), therefore the Mexican-American presence does predate the Mayflower and Juan Cortez in Tenochtitlan (present-day Mexico city). +

Americans should stay Arabic the same way Arab speaking countries learn English: which language to use first and foremost? I knew some Middle Eastern countries are former French colonies or territories: Libya, Syria and Lebanon come to mind. Israel is officially Hebrew, then English and Arabic, and the common presence of Russian in government documents for newly-arrived “Refuseniks” from the former USSR. +

Correct, but half the English language is from Norman French from the time the Normans ruled England and most of the Britainnic isles. Norman itself is a partially Germanic tongue mixed with the already mixed French langauge of Gaullic (Celtic), Roman (Latin) and some Frankish tribes of southwest Germany. French is said to have Greek, Moorish and Iberian words from previous rulers of the country in the last 2,000 years. +

LoL! New England has alot of French-Canadian roots: how come northernmost Maine, parts of Vermont and several towns in New Hampshire have Franco-Canadien/Canado-Americane social clubs or meeting places like a fraternity of some kind? The US census report in 1990 found 10-15% of residents in Manchester, Maine; Barre, Vermont and Augusta, Maine reported to have French a first language. +

Maybe why Parisian French has a haute-couture place in the world is the historical “lingua franca” it once was in the middle ages, when France was the leading European power when England, Germany or Spain didn’t have “their turn”. Spanish became the global language when Spain had the world’s largest empire in the 16th to early 19th centuries, and don’t forget the Dutch & Portuguese empires held more colonial land claims in all 5 or 6 continents before “Great” Britain ruled the waves in the 19th/early 20th century. +

Over 1.4 billion Mandarin Chinese speakers vs. 600 million native English speakers! The United Nations declared Han Mandarin along with English, Spanish, French, Russian and Arabic the six co-official languages used nearly everyhwere in the world. Both Russian and Arabic spreads thousands of miles/kms. east to west over 2 continents each. Talk about a “world language” connected by land other than by sea. +

Hey L.A. ,you heard about English is commonly known in Japan and south Korea, as a result of post-WWII American occupation and the influence of American English has on the local langauges to some extent. In Japan, the slang words aren’t correct: “Junior poisoning” in “Engrish” or Japanese English stands for “annoying children” not hurting kids. +

I came across Mexican Indians (or racially more indigenous or simply mestizos) from rural interior states who speak a very different form of Spanish or in some cases, Mayan or Aztecan languages. They may say “Wey?” instead of “que” to stand for “what?”, and the Mexican consulate in L.A. has documents in 12 indigenous languages. +

Awesome, I knew about the Afro-Caribbean influences in Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela, large numbers of people have African blood, whether they are “white” or “black” the majority of people are mixed-race over 400 years of African slaves, later were given freedom by the Catholic church in former Spanish or Portuguese colonies and the right to blend in the white population. +

I try not to endorse Argentina on SWPL, you know to keep out “ugly” Americans move there in the same manner some former Nazi war crime fugitives have after WWII. It is one of the “nations of exile” where many nationalities from the Welsh to Palestinians, and from Koreans to Croatians (as examples) moved to fleeing from political problems and ethnic conflict. +

Of course, when one goes to a language learning class, it’s British “King’s” English or Castille Spanish, not Latin American dialects or other English dialects in Australia, Canada, South Africa, etc. The French spoken in Canada (i.e. Quebecois) is not Parisian or European French either.

Spain, like France and the UK, have language diversity like t
the Welsh or Cymrag spoken in Wales, Occitan in southern France with the related Catalan in northeast Spain, and the Basque not related to the Indo-European language family. There’s been effort to revive minority languages across the European Union member countries, in part of tolerance & diversity of other cultures. +

Italy…where the whitest of the whites wanna be, except the Vatican or the Southern provinces. Northern Italy is a racist fantasy: mostly blonde, blue-eyed and descended from Germanic invaders to brought down Rome. LoL, the Lega Nord or Lombardi are regional separatists based in Milan or Venice speak about Sicilians and Napolitians are mulattos, descendants of a brief period of Moorish-Arabic occupation in the 800’s or 900s AD, intermarried the locals and converted to Christianity, but are not “Europeans”. That is a very idiotic racist statement from one fellow Italian to another, an example of ethnic divisions remain in the new Europe, and I may be wrong, but Italian-Americans are said to be of Sicilian backgrounds than other regions. +

Last post: Should I bother to learn Cherokee when in fact 15,000 out of 850,000 registered members of the Cherokee Nation in the U.S. (mostly live in Oklahoma, but maybe more in California) actually speak any of it regularly? To raise a child to know, read or talk in more than one language is a valuable educational tool, but why if it’s a rich white guy is something superior than the “undereducated” people are only proficient in English? Lemme say this in Spanish and French: “El hombre no hable, el cabazon solo con mierda” and “Le Homme est ne parle pas, c’est pure merde”. +

Good, I’m glad white people (in America) value multilingualism these days because last time i checked the majority were voting for “english only” laws and trying to solidify cultural superiority through monolingualism. Yay, progress!

I grew up in the ’80s, the time when white people began to chill out over ethnic things, an example of the first years of Spanish-language television (circa KVEA 52 Corona, Cal. in the Los Angeles area) despite an Anglo boy like me seen some of this stuff, and only if I can learn it this easy.

It’s Greek to me! A classical academic language to learn, esp. in the arts, sciences, astronomy, literature, history, botany and religion. Greek along with Latin is the kind of language you want your children to learn in order to get ahead or succeed in a multicultural/multilingual world. +

ROFL. Now you learn what it is like for the Jews, Irish, Poles, Armenians, Assyrians, Palestinians, Galicians, Basques, African-Americans, Puerto Ricans on the mainland, Cherokee Indians and Samoan people (to name a few) have gone through: more of their people live outside their homeland than within, scattered around the world with a limited hope and a strong diverse to be a nation again. +

…and to add Chinese live in Madagascar (huge island) and Mauritius (small but appear) off the coast of Africa, Koreans in Dubai or Iran, and Japanese in Australia/New Zealand. The Russian government wants to seal off the borders with Asian countries. Many countries have millions of emigrants leave their home lands every year, won’t be suprised if the USA became one by the current economic state of affairs. +

Interestingly, white Anglos in California get upset when they start speaking at a Latino/Hispanic first “en espanol” and the response “hey I speak English, don’t expect me to speak Spanish.” It would be better to put a sign in two or more languages now in public places: Major retailers have hanging bilingual signs, but not where the blogger Justin dares to shop in. “WAL-MART, bajos precios, !siempre!” +

Cathy, I plan to visit there someday except like a ball of mass consciousness came about: Many white Americans are visiting Chile, the so-called “ecotourists” and not long ago, Wienerschnitzel had a contest to win a trip to Chile. You ever watched stuff on youtube about news around the world? I watched a thing from Al-Jazeera English service on Palestinians and Arab immigrants in Chile (with another clip on Brazil) the two countries have the largest Palestinian communities outside of Palestine (or Israel). +

LOL even more, I hope never to marry a woman richer than me (also LOL on that). The risk of divorce goes up 1000%! Teach a child to play with his toys, have him decide if he wants an electric guitar, a piano, a flute or a saxophone. The point of choosing to be a musician when he/she grows up is to have fun, and a musical career on their own terms.+

Are there white parents also adopting Asian (and African) children in record numbers? May as well bring over a child and his mother to adopt, other than send in $1 to “save the children” foundation and find out the $1 goes to a neo-fascistic third world military regime treasury.

What ever happened to forced child adoption policies done to American Indians and Hispanics of the mid 20th century? White people may well adopt a child forced out of their homes and culture, according to child custody services officials, “was inferior to them”. I know the forced child adoption programs caused devastation to the American Indian tribes…and now grown-up adoptees ever since. +

You ignorant piece of… Dutch? Well, you can eat shit in any case, regardless of you being a Dutchman, a Frog, or Pakistani.

You know nothing of America, or Americans. Nada, zilth, inget, nothing. You mock the Americans who try to learn another language, whilst bragging about your own ‘linguistic accomplishments’ (I bet you only speak like 2-3 of them properly). Who is it that is “selfcentered”? Them… or you?

I am German and living in Germany,an almost monolingual country by now. The U. S. are famous for monolingualism, too. In my opinion, an intelligent man or woman should know more than just one language in order not to be threatened of narrow-mindness. The narrow-mindness is widespread in Germany because of monolinual policies instead of supporting the regional languages.
I hope that the U. S. will not become English-only speaking because of loosing all native American and immigrant languages. This would be a great loss. I know that because my native area has nearly completely lost its regional language. Why not helping the native Americans to make flourishing their languages again by offering native American languages beside others at common schools and organising exchanges with native Americans? A native American language from a population near the city or town would be appropriate. For it is your country’x heritage, too.
With regards, Alexander Dietz

I worry about people loose their parental heritage to fit in with “everyone else” in America (the sense of conformity), but newcomers need to learn the basic parts of English to get by and many white Americans find it annoying to be asked “hablamos espanol senor?” or “I can’t speak English, I’m Vietnamese”. To have a Cherokee grandmother grew up in a BIA-run federal school in 1900’s era Tulsa where the white teachers will slap, spank or scold any Indian child for speaking their native tongues, it was abusive to teach the children it’s a shameful thing to be of another race/culture. Americans are tolerant of so many things, be it religion or political belief as long it doesn’t hurt people, diversity in culture is a good thing for Americans to demonstrate we’re a free country and nobody imposes it on others by fear, hate or intolerance. The saying goes “Vive le Difference”. +

Being the product of a billingual child dream, I have to say the pros outweigh the uselessness of this second language. Not only is it good for a government job or being able to teach other people’s children this wonderful new skill, it is also great for being able to eavesdrop on conversations that people probably hope you can’t understand. Fortunately French is a national language in Canada and the public school system dishes out immersion or billingual programs (for many different languages) like candy to hopeful parents who wish to add culture to their children’s lives. And on the plus side, if your child never uses the language later in life, you can guarantee the companies that make english/______ dictionaries plenty of sales as your child will likely only know a word in one of the multiple languages he or she knows.

I love this list post, it is so true! I love this whole site, actually, because I love pea coats, hummus, reading by the water, etc. I also like how the other comments for multilingual children are so earnest. I happen to be a white person married to someone who speaks another language, and the irony is not lost on me. While I married for love, I would be dishonest if I said that knowing any children we have will learn a foreign language for free didn’t cause me to say, secretly to myself, “BONUS!”. My sister has also married someone who speaks another language, and that’s a double bonus because both of our children have access to free instruction for two non-English languages!

Wow! I love it that my Grandkids live in Germany and speak German and English back and forth! I just got back!
I know it is really racist of me not to want them to be ignorant crackers. But I will have to live with my shame!

My parents were dying to have me learn french, then I took spanish…wow now it’s like I’m illiterate in two new languages! Fortunately, writing for http://StuffRichPeopleLove.com means I get to use foreign phrases from time to time to sound ignorant. Hey amanda (see next comment) you know what it’s like to be ignorant right?

My parents were dying to have me learn french, then I took spanish…wow now it’s like I’m illiterate in two new languages! Fortunately, writing for http://StuffRichPeopleLove.com means I get to use foreign phrases from time to time to sound arrogant. Hey amanda (see next comment) you know might not know about arrogance but you know what it’s like to be ignorant right?

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in Spanish! Why not get out the analog antennaes still useful to receive Mexican TV? How low-class is that? The redneck families’ kids need to find available work and opportunities, besides most factory jobs are in Mexico anyway. ssshhh! No hable espanol. +

In America, white people expected everyone to know a second language despite for 200 years, we had the “learn English or GTFO” rule. It’s sad that many French-speaking American communities didn’t maintain the language as much, how come Louisiana is perceived culturally unique? The WASP households don’t want their kids to become emotionally close to fraternize with non-English speaking housemaids or gardeners, why not speak to them in Spanish or Tagalog/Filipino or some other language?

Is that enough, or did you want to practice your English?
It amazes me that anyone Dutch would have anything to say about Americans, when they are currently hording Turks, Moroccans, and other minorities that they don’t like into ghettos and creating an atmosphere of hatred in Amsterdam and elsewhere. Just because you think you’re enlightened doesn’t mean you are.
And I would have to say that it’s to America’s credit that we’re trying to learn a new language even though we don’t have to. Unlike the Dutch, we didn’t have a bunch of different nations invading us throughout history forcing us to learn their language, so it’s a matter of interest rather than necessity. And if I spoke the most gutteral, goofy and irritating language in the world “Dutch” I would learn another language too.

As an Army brat, I did live in french and german speaking countries and learned both languages. So unipressed were we with the french people that it wasn’t much of a loss that we never practiced it and forgot it. I kind of miss the German though.
I did marry Asian and my kids are bi-lingual. Go figure.

First, thank you for your service to our country. Your loss of the French language probably stems from America’s envy/scorn at the French. I have been learning French (as a third language) for over 30 years and still not fluent, but I still love it. It is much easier than Mandarin and Korean (hangul?) which I am learning as 4th and 5th language respectively.

I think liberals envy the french for some reason nobody in their right mind could fathom. Unless they were completely ignorant of history, and current affairs, or had never been to France. Good luck with the Asian languages, I lived and worked all over South Korea and Japan for 10 years and married a Japanese woman. I just don’t have the time it would require to devote to learning either fluently.
I was an Army brat in Germany and Belgium, and a contractor in Afghanistan and Iraq. My Dad didn’t want me to join the Army, and my country didn’t call on me when I was of age. After 9/11 I was too old to soldier, so I went and helped out the only way I could. While I appreciate very much your thoughts on our men and women in the military, I never had the priviledge of serving with them in uniform.

I live in Holland, where secondary school children are required to learn not a second language, but 3 others on top of Dutch. So the line up looks like this, Dutch, English, German, and French! My daughter speaks fluent Dutch, and is working on Japanese, we are not white, but we have been called beige, that might be it. :)

And it’s oh so sad. The few of us in college are working to rectify that. haha

Mostly, we’re resigned to the fact that everyone has their turn at being rejected in the US. We Mexican-Americans have had our turn for quite some time now, but then so did the Irish once, and the Italians, and the Chinese during the construction of the railroads, and the Japanese during WWII. More recently, those of Middle Eastern descent have also gotten the rejection card.

Hopefully, it’ll change someday. For now, those of us with college degrees can be comforted by the fact that speaking a second language, especially Spanish, makes you more competitive on the white collar job market in California and many of the other states.

If you want to have your children learn french, move to Canada! I live in Canada, and I’m enrolled in a school with a program where all classes are in french from grades K-12. It’s a free, public education because it is our second language. There are also entirely french schools for the regular price of public education.
But I have to admit I know alot of french, but don’t speak it at home. If you want a kid to speak french at home, their parents have to be french… or it just seems weird.

I’m white (but from Oop North, so it doesn’t count) and I speak bits of French, German, Spanish, Japanese (I have no idea where I picked that up), Latin and Russian. Sentence fragments in French, Spanish, Japanese and Russian, Simple sentences is German, and quite a bit of Latin.

Spanish is a subsitute?
Why is that I have encountered an explosion of many white people (and other races) speaking spanish, when they themselves are obviously not native speakers, to their children. In all cases it was the parent pointing at an object and saying its name in spanish. Why not french? I guess living in the U.S. french would not be a useful language. Maybe as a tri-lingual choice because many of my friends who are native speakers of a 2nd language move on to french…

I think its just plain ignorance if someone considers one language more ghetto than another. Couldnt someone visiting the U.S think american english as ghetto? All languages have variations and I think they all have speakers from different social classes that will speak the language differently. This is definetly the case with english and spanish.

Oh god. I think, if a person wants to learn a language, learn the WHOLE language. I hate it when some kid comes up to me trying to speak spanish, and sounds sooo stupid. It’s like dude, you sound like some retarted chicano. But yeah.

Hey, I live in NB, and my parents forced me into french immersion, and I totally resent them for it. They had the option for me to start in grade 1 or 6, and they choose 6, and know in grade 11, I still do not know the basics and not from lack of effort. Our system is so messed up, have you heard about the thing they have started in grade 5 here? It is crazy.

How interesting, white people will only consider Hispanics of brown-skinned appearance to be ghetto, because the whites are often told it is wrong or gauche to use the term for a black person (er, African American) or where black people live. I thought the most minority you can get is American Indians to share a history of conquest, slavery and other injustices done by the white man. Every white person claims to be part-Indian instead, must be cool to join the Caucasian Tribe in a war vs. the Mexican tribes before the presence of an African tribe, the two are allies.

Damn right. Know what you mean. I am multi-lingual and not white, which explains a lot, and have close families, white wannabes, who not only sent the kid to french schools, but even hired french au pairs to raise the tikes so they grow up in a francophone family.

Wow. That is ridiculous. I mean, if the parent(s) speak it thats one thing, but making sure your nanny speaks their native language and only that language to your child so they can have a second language is pretty dumb. I am white and I would never do that to my child. I would teach him/her things I have picked up though.
Some people are just not ment to reproduce I guess.

Marrying somoene just so your kid can learn another language is stupid it’s reason’s like that the divorce rate in the U.S is so high. I mean where’s the love isn’t that why your supposed to get married cause you love somoene? People who marry for money and to make there parents happy deserve to be unhappy.

Comments like this are absolutely amazing. This is a somewhat slightly borderline dumb post in itself yet the person posting has the gall to blast whole groups of people. No offense but earth to your all so sad and confused, darling if you live here, you are affected in some degree for better and admittedly worse by some American traits yourself-warts and all since you are in proximity to all the ills that you say infect everyone else! No offense, I’m just being honest here; and one more thing, there are disagreements here or there in other places too. I am not trying to make the US look better and other places worse either, (there a places that rule and suck to varying degrees and time influences when and how) I am simply saying that other places have their share of conflicts every once in a while as well. Nevertheless, I sincerly hope you are safe if stuff hits the fan or I simply hope you like whereever you stay should you ever decide to leave here, I am just expressing my very humble opinion!It would be quite ok if you stayed or left since I hope you enjoy life, again I am just expressing my very humble opinion!

This article should be called “Stuff white US-AMERICAN people like- multilingual children”;
Most young people from Europe speak at least English in additon to their native language and especially in Scandinavia, Germany etc. it is necessary to take at least 2 foreign languages in highschool (and believe me, Spanish classes in Germany are definitly not the same as Spanish classes in the US…). I am 19 and I speak German, English, French and Spanish.

The writer describes this blog as a humorous look on North American white culture. “White” is more used in the American context because when you are in a more homogeneous country, you are less likely to see white culture because there is not a large visible minority to compare to. On another note, wanting multilingual children actually applies to Europeans as well. It’s just that not just the parents want it, but that the institutions support the cause and actually make it a requirement at school.

It is seen as a cheaper alternative to language schools…. haha, so true.. i’m asian and i speak 4 languages fluently and learning french at the moment and i hate my parents not getting me rench lesson when i was younger.. and i want my future kid to speak more languages than i do!

Ok, the liberals wanted all the public schools integrated and have a quota of diverse races or ethnic groups, therefore it is the best to have your child exposed to or immersed in foreign languages in public schools, if they are integrated and not like all black, white, Latino or Asian. In fact, public schools are becoming more ethnic enclaves again in the last 40 years, because when a busing order happens, whites will take their kids out and by 10-20 years, it becomes an all-black or minority school. Many public schools in Cal. are now all-Latino and most of them are immigrants, so when they enter, speaks Spanish instead of proficiency in English.

Why French? It’s not like knowledge of French will translate in appreciation of French songs (which suck). Maybe it’s the Canadian in me but I just don’t care for the language. I’d much rather learn German (sexy) or Russian (sexy) or Latin (ultimate douche appeal).

No, as she points out, she’s Canadian. There’s a vast difference between real French (e.g. from France) and French Canadian (Quebecois) – both in terms of cultural richness and the language. Just as French culture has depth and is beautiful, Quebecois productions are clumsy and trite.

I have a father who’s from France (the Nord/PDC region) and he taught me some French, except I forgot to use it when not traveling aboard to see family members with a better proficiency in English than me speaking French… and I pronounced it in the typical American way (LoL).

It’s also a rule of thumb to use the country’s native language when you’re abroad, like it’s a “need” for many multilingual white American children and teens must move onto France in the future, associate with Parisian elites or immerse themselves in a French-speaking culture.

Historically, the Nord/Pas de Calais region used to have a large Flemish-speaking population until 2 centuries ago, by the introduction of public education and campaigns to eradicate native tongues of inhabitants not speaking Parisian French, they were closer to Flanders, Belgium.

I have two of 3 cousins on my Dad’s side studied English, with some Danish, Dutch, German, Italian and Spanish. In many European countries, one traveler can find tourist services provided in English, adjacent national and local languages: Luxembourg is an example of this custom. +

“Why French? It’s not like knowledge of French will translate in appreciation of French songs (which suck). Maybe it’s the Canadian in me but I just don’t care for the language. I’d much rather learn German (sexy) or Russian (sexy) or Latin (ultimate douche appeal).”

Once upon a time like in the 2nd millennium, any wealthy elite person in an English-speaking country knew the king of England and much of Christendom was dominated by the Franks, a South Germanic tribe Latinized after they conquered Gaul from the Romans…and mixed with the Celto-Roman population in the 500s and 800s AD. They were part of the massive invasions of Roman Europe by the Germanic tribes like Goths, Teutons and Vikings.

Then, another Germanic tribe, the Normans from Norway or Denmark of Viking descent, settled in Normandy and expanded their reign into then-Anglo Saxon England (pre-modern English speakers related to the Dutch)in the year 1066 when they landed in the beach of Hastings and taken over the British isles. These Norsemen adapted the “Vulgate Latin” or the “Langue d’ Oil”, that is, the Northern French language centered in the city of Paris.

French was the language of the elite, religion, banking, academia education, entertainment in plays, literature writing such as music and poetry, and was second place to the Latin of Old Rome died off when the Western Roman Empire collapsed. French was the “Lingua Franca” of first Europe, then the world from the 16th to 19th centuries and by the beginning of the 1940’s, its dominance was confronted by English spoken by Britain and the USA. +

Are you that racist or just stupid ?
You’re lack of Global awareness and exposure to non white cultures is evident.

There are people of colour ( maybe you feel better about yourself by saying Black ) that speak french, whose native tongue is french.

So to make such a absurd ( it means stupid ) comment, ” are you black or something ” shows your ignorance. People like you judge what you don’t know, base your opinions on stereotypes. Believing all people of color are the same.

Well let me guess are you white or just some modern mutation of Vitiligo.

Show respect you get respect, being white is not an automatic privilege card where you speak without thinking. And don’t even think or responding and saying ” I’m not white ”

As water reflects a face, so a man’s heart reflects the man. Proverbs 27:19

Like someone already pointed out, some white people have no choice! If you’re European (I’m guessing this is about White Americans though?) you have no choice, you have to speak tons of languages. I haven’t always been a fan of this, but what can you do?

The best way to learn a language is to get totally enveloped in the culture and country of its origin. This article describes much of what I did learning Spanish language before I got my MA in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. Immersion is definitely the best way to learn a foreign language.

To the correction guru person, hey, I’m white and this shit is not only funny but it’s on the mark every time. So accept that this is a joke and move on. If I’m not mistaken this site was set up by a white bloke. Grow up, you overly politically correct twat. In my experience, it’s the mopey new age tree huggers who are secret Klan men.

What I dont seem to understand is why teach a tounge like french and not consider spanish as “acceptable the fact is spanish I spoken in many more areas then french which pertains mostly to france and some parts of canada spanish on the other hand could help a person go to south and central america with the exclusion of brasil where they speak portuguesse and meet different varieties of cultures and learn of them. No only that but they could also travel to spain and learn of their culture. The fact is although french is indeed amazing I speak it somewhat well it will not help someone to the same extent as spanish if you look at the numbers and statistics the hispanic community is starting to grow at an alarming rate to non-latino whites the fact is the largest growing minority will possible if it continues growing at this rate soon be the majority and how will french help these children communicate with the hypothetical monority should they be stubborn to learn english. The reality is although french is a great language and is fun spanish or the chinese dialect of mandarin would be much more reasonable to teach a child if you hope that they be succesfull something such as portuguesse would also be acceptable considering the growth rate it is at currently soon it might be a world power though that is questionable.

I guess the common theme in all these posts is the fact that white people are generally more class conscious, and as a result go to great lengths to ensure their status within society, thus explaining why they’re into vintage clothing, or boast about their music collections, education etc.. it distinguishes them from their peers, giving them the impression of superiority. Everything is for the ulterior unfortunately; I guess they’re more ambitious, perhaps something instilled in child-hood? That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but you lose sight of what’s important.

White people, well all people, also enjoy http://www.NakedHipster.com. Mainly because the girls are hot and don’t have clothes on. Usually those two things go well together. You know, the hotness and the nakedness.
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Reading this blog makes me dissapointed… but in the writer, or my fellow white people? I can only hope that what you write isn’t true. As for the content, none of it applies to me. And I doubt it applies to my white friends either.

most white people don’t realize what an entirely useless language french is. i was raised bilingual (i’m half-argentinian) and what bothers me is when white people pretend that they have been bilingual for years.

what i mean is, i know this family that loves to pretend they’re from argentina. no joke. here in sf, it’s the cool thing now to speak spanish, cause you’ll get a job. so they send their kids to some hippie bilingual english-spanish school. the kids have awful accents and can barely order off of a spanish menu, but apparently the family is now [insert hip spanish-speaking nationality here.] they call the daughter “isabelita”, supported argentina in the world cup, and keep bombillas in their silverware drawer. you know, because they can’t get through their evening without some mate.

it just pisses me off beyond belief. as someone who speaks spanish, has been to argentina, has actually tried mate, which is the nastiest thing in the world, and has actual ancestral justification for rooting for argentina…

the only language anybody needs is English, anything else is just a way for some douche to think he’s special for learning something completely useless.

I’ve been pretty much all over the world, learned french and german and forgot it for lack of use, same with all the Korean and Japanese I learned. Even though my wife is Japanese and my kids are bilingual. They visit Japan often enough and speak it with my wife to keep it.

On the whole, its still entirely unecassary. I mean, who the fuck cares how to order a taco in spanish, or would care about not paying their landscaper for fucking up their lawn?? and marriachi music?? gimme a break..

Europeans are pretty much all fucked in the head anyway, so who cares what they think enough to waste valuable life learning thier idiotic language, when you could learn something useful?

Unless you are doing business with the Japanese as I have, there is not enough use for any other language to warrant wasting a minute learning more than is in the guide book.

well coming from a white canadian here in ottawa, ontario, it is almost impossible to get a job that involves office work unless you speak both english and french. i am very proud to be bilingual and i thank my parents for doing this for me <3

There languages are thought in school (German and French in my case). I blame the school system though not my parents for my poor grasp of the above; for the substandard way of teaching them and not actually getting us to speak them for the most part of forty minute period we had them.

Americans see foreign languages as something interesting, but not interesting enough to take too seriously. If they do take it seriously and want to learn a language, they usually go about it in the wrong way (i.e. Rosetta Stone) and end up not learning the language in the end.

They also can’t stick with it long. Go to a Half Price Books store and pick up a language book. You will see that the book is written in and the exercises are done up to chapter 2 or chapter 3, then the rest of the book is untouched. I have seen that time and time again.

Haha, I find this very funny. I’m black and I’m bilingual, I speak French and English. I would say that people (and this goes for whites too) are impressed with another language if they can’t speak it. I have a friend who speaks English and German and though she finds French ‘cool’ she isn’t too excited by it. (She’s white). But my other friends (also white) find it extremely interesting when they hear me speak French. And they want me to teach them etc. I just think its the whole ‘I don’t understand, and multicultural’ thing.

The person that posted below me is right. Spanish is a European (hence white) language, but sadly, due to the ignorance of the majority of the US (those ‘wrong kind of white folk’ you jokingly refer to) it has gotten such a bad rap as it is only associated with the Spanish spoken Central and South America. Castillian Spanish (from Spain) is what should be taught in schools, and Spanish culture (not Latin American) should be the focus, and then I’m sure Americans would develop a greater appreciation for the language.
There is also a double edge to the French language..but Americans don’t think of it. Lots of North Africans and islanders speak French as their native language after the French colonized these regions some time ago (like Spain colonized parts of So and C America). So does that make it a non-white language? Of course not, because the language developed in Europe.
Spanish should be thought of similarly. It is not a bad substitute for French. I speak both languages, and appreciate them equally.

Heh. I’m white and I also wish my parents would have put me into some kind of language immersion thing when I was little. Buuut instead of being bitter I decided to start learning now.

When I have kids I would like them to be bilingual, yeah. But it’s not my first priority. I wouldn’t want to pressure them into learning something they have no interest in, if they have no interest in it.

What did you say? “some hypothetical minority”…ughh. This is why white folks don’t think that Spanish is a worthy language. After all the only ones that speak it are hypothetical minorities and not cultured French folks with beanies and riding a bike with a baguette in a basket. Just the maid and the landscaper speak Spanish right???? I have something to add to that conversation Spanishteen. ” Eres un grandisimo estupido” Now in the words of Antowen Dotson: Run and tell That.

No offense but for once can you not refer to every damn thing as white people this and white people that. I mean like we are the only race on this planet that takes interest in other things other then what is predominantly white. Whatever the hell that means lol. The level of your ignorance is beyond description at times but I won’t go there. Coming from one Canadian to the next you give us a bad name but I guess I should be used to it by now as a long time reader.

Anyways you are correct though in some of your observations. I resent the hell out of the fact that most schools only teach English at least until the high school level. Studies have shown that students who study foreign languages for longer periods of time did better on various SAT sub-tests and on the test as a whole then students who studied less foreign language, even when the variable of verbal giftedness was controlled.

Students who take a foreign language in high school scored significantly higher on the verbal portion of the SAT than those who do not. Although this percentage would be much higher if we learned at a much younger age. Personally Spanish is much higher on the list now then it used to be. Having a Hispanic population of over 60 million now. It would be wise for us to have that as part of the school curriculum as a prerequisite.

Likely though it will go on deaf ears. Chinese is another which is gaining popularity and importance but until schools start making it more a focus. I don’t see much changing in the near future. In contrast you look at most schools in Europe and elsewhere which have the knowledge of at least 2-3 languages sometimes more in their repertoire.
This is embarrassing and frankly unacceptable and shows our lack of education in these areas.

Might explain why US is so poor in the public relations department which needs an overhaul. Some people question the importance of why learning a second language is even necessary when English is likely all we will ever need. After all the international language in business is English right. Well that is a bit narrow-minded in that an English speakers ability to speak English doesn’t mean much by itself. A homeless guy on the street may speak English to but a lot of good that does him.

Although ones ability to speak something other then his or her native tongue will open a lot of doors which they otherwise might have not had. So yes you are correct in that observation. Although some do it as a challenge to themselves beyond their own limitations. To prove that they can or to just further their education. All in all though learning any language doesn’t hurt anyone. If nothing else it looks damn good on a resume.

I think it is great that more white Americans learn a language other than English. Just please don’t but into people’s personal conversations uninvited just to show off your language skills. It’s sooooooooooooooo rude.

My dad went above and beyond back before these things were popular (you know BEFORE it was cool, or at least recognized as so on a comedic level). He got him an international wife from Brazil. Now as I read this in Portugal, while here on my unpaid chemistry internship, and think about studying abroad in the spring in France, I realized… I’m white as fuck. I mean sure there are things about me that just came innate with the blood, (I’m good at soccer, but nobody ever taught me to play) I’m still able to check off a ton of these things on this list. Maybe I’ll write a book or something.

AmericanSpaniard, I disagree with you that Spanish from Spain language and culture should be taught at school instead of Latin American. Why on earth replacing one with another as if one were superior? The Spanish language has many varieties, as it is spoken in over 20 countries in the world. Each and everyone of them is worthy of study, as are their respective rich cultures and histories.

hahaha you are one funny bastard!! This one made me crack up…”expert level white behaviour”…very true this article…

Recently, a guy in his late twenties approached my sister on a tram in Melbourne (a city not unlike New York in advanced white cosmopolitanism). He started small talk, after which he concluded that she was French, due to her accent (white people are obsessed with accents). After she told him she was Serbian, the guy stopped talking and ran off, visibly shaken. :)

In addition to worshipping anything French, I’ve noticed a lot of white people here idealising Germans and Germany as of late. This would’ve been a big no-no among baby boomer generation. Now it’s a standard advanced-level white behaviour. I guess they associate Germany with a high standard of living (very strange as Australia has a pretty high standard too, major corporations such as Mercedes and BMW, and of course being lcoated in central Europe is a plus)…

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I Don’t mean to brag but I know more than 4 languages , I grew up in Kuwait to afghan parents speaking dari at home, speaking farsi at the iranian school I attended as a kid, speaking arabic with everybody else. my parents also taught me the language of our tribe (Hazaragi) and now I can also speak english and Turkish. the thing most people fail to realize is in order for a person to get a solid foundation in a language they must be used to hearing/speaking/writing and reading several tongues so they are used to different sounds and pronounciations. I hope you guys do not think I am bragging, I am just informing people on the basics.

Multilingual children are always important. By speaking more languages you are given more opportunities to succeed in the professional world. Many schools and summer camps focus on langauge development for this reason.

The current curriculum involves a lot of language. Usually in the old days ESL students were able to cope in a math class. Not anymore. They need basic conversation and vocabulary to solve math Problems.

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